Michael Golden’s images are metaphors of the reality he experiences. His work blends nature, science and geometric design. Some powerful influences, cultural as well as personal, have shaped his creative intuitions: his love and entanglement with nature and a varied personal medical history. Golden utilizes his experiences and influences from nature with a design concept based on “sacred geometry” providing a fundamental ordering principle for his compositions.

Diagnosed with a blind right eye from birth, the artist has no depth perception and sees the world as flat and two-dimensional. He explores the primordial question: “what constitutes life?” or “what makes life?” as he puts it. This is the one theme that is always there in his work, it is embedded in every piece, be it physical, spiritual, emotional or intellectual.

Michael Golden has developed an entire canon of images that codify and articulate his emotions and visions. Some recurring ones are funnels, keys, the amaryllis, snakes and especially birds. Birds are pivotal in this artist / naturalist’s universe. In most cultures birds are the messenger between earth and heavens.

“Sacred geometry” has its root in the recognition of mathematical patterns found in nature, like the logarithmic spiral of the chambered Nautilus and the hexagonal storage cells of the honeybee. These geometric ratios and figures were often employed in the design of architectural structures such as the pyramids, Greek temples or medieval cathedrals. Collapsing three-dimensionality into a two-dimensional topology, Michael Golden re-creates a visionary reality that resembles his experience of his monocular state.
The “sacred geometry” matrix then lets his birds and other species of the natural world live and exist in a two-dimensional world. The concept of a “flatland universe”, whereby the universe is reduced to a two-dimensional model plus time is currently the subject of serious scientific inquiry.

Michael Golden grew up in the neighborhood and took art classes at the Beverly Art Center in the 70’s. Golden graduated from Notre Dame in 1981 with a degree in business, and eventually graduated with the MFA in Printmaking from the University of Illinois – Champaign Urbana. Golden currently lives in Houston, TX, where he has been a professor of Art for the last 25 years. He has exhibited at the Painting Center and Artists Space in New York City, Dallas, Toronto, San Diego, St. Louis, and other cities. His work is in several museum, corporate, and private collections.

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Tags: Beverley Art Center, Beverly, Chicago, Michael Golden, The Bird Is A Place