51
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
art treatise
a splash
of color
John W. Golden’s art swims from
the computer to collectors’ homes
By Giovan J. Michael
THE coastal waters of North
Carolina are teeming with
an exotic collection of sea
life. From the spot to the
tarpon, the skipjack tuna to
the lemon shark, the ocean is home to a
vast and diverse collection of swimming
critters that has captured the imagina-tion
of artists for thousands of years.
That includes John W. Golden. His
series “Coastal Decor” has been growing
in both size and popularity since 2006,
but now he is using modern technology
to do something new with these age-old
marine muses.
Golden is a digital artist, but his
pieces are not confined to the two-di-mensional
prison of a computer screen.
His fish jump out at the viewer in a
splash of color from the three-dimen-sional
birchwood boards they live
on. Creating one of his famous fish is a
multi-phased process that starts on the
computer but ends in a tactile and bold
piece that immediately draws the eye.
The process starts in Photoshop,
where Golden creates his own brushes
with custom textures and unique col-ors.
His work is a wide departure from
the gray and aquamarine color palette
in vogue with much of contemporary
coastal art, but he thinks that is a good
thing. It’s what draws people to the
work.
John W. Golden’s fish illustrations are
printed on archival matte paper in sev-eral
sizes ranging from 12 to 21 inches
wide. The images mounted on birch ply-wood
vary from 6 to 36 inches wide.