54
WBM august 2020
IT HAS BEEN almost 15 years
since Golden started his first
installment for the collection —
an expressive tarpon — but the
project is kept fresh by the chal-lenge
to make each fish unique.
“It’s like solving a puzzle, and
that’s what gets me most excited,”
he says. “It forces me to draw on
the right side of my brain; to stop
looking at something as a whole
and to start breaking it up into
shapes. I’ll know it’s done when
it looks like a fish, but I don’t
necessarily know how I’m going
to get from a blank page to a
finished product, so it’s fun to see
what happens in between. There’s
something meditative about it.”
That creative process has
inspired Golden over his career,
and is a requisite for anyone who
aspires to make art.
“Prioritize the things you love,”
he says. “You don’t have to quit
your day job and become a full-time
artist if you want to create
art. What’s really important is
that if you love making things,
whether that’s music, or paint-ings,
or prints, you don’t stop
doing it. Even if it’s on a small
scale. I recently started playing
music again. I put the guitar
down for almost 18 years, and
sometimes I kick myself at what
a great guitarist I could have
been if I just hadn’t stopped. In
short, if you love doing some-thing,
do it.”