Abbey Golden (B. NY, 1986) is an LA based artist that blends classical technique with contemporary cool. Within her work, Golden creates and excavates a personal mythology. She seeks to capture fleeting moments through color, light and form; making the ephemeral eternal.

Golden's artistic practice embodies a vibrant interplay of color and emotion. Her distinct palette is characterized by sun-drenched pastels and unexpected color combinations. The surreal quality of her figures, mostly female, emphasizes the whimsical yet earnest nature of what it means to inhabit a body.

Golden’s fleshy, archetypal subjects seem forced to reckon with their own flawed humanity. Her deliberate simplification of place creates a sense of ambiguity, inviting the viewer to “complete the story” and speculate about its narrative context. Moreover, her curiosity around family dynamics, motherhood, Jewish heritage, and queer identity influence her choices, using these themes to evoke cultural or emotional resonance.

Golden’s background as a fabric specialist helps inform the organic patterning and textural quality of the work. Her traditional training in oil paint and education of art history while studying in Florence, Italy at a formative age has also heavily inspired her approach. The work is commonly well-researched and referential.

The true origin of Golden’s artistic prowess can be traced back to childhood trips into Manhattan with her grandmother “Gamma” Julia Levien. A pioneering Isadora Duncan dancer and bohemian feminist, Levien instilled in Abbey from an early age that art was not a pastime but a way of life, something to be practiced daily. Their cultural pilgrimages to New York City’s greatest museums cracked open the walls of suburbia, revealing a vast world of possibility just a train ride away.

Golden received a BFA in Fine Art and Art History at the University of Arizona in 2008. She was trained in traditional oil painting techniques at Florence Academy of the Arts in 2006. She’s taken additional courses at FIT (2004) in New York and OTIS College of Art and Design (2016) in Los Angeles. Showing and selling paintings since a teenager, her work can be found in collections all over the world.

She is certified in safe studio practices and works exclusively in solvent-free, eco-friendly methods.