Abbey Golden (B. NY, 1986) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Blending classical technique with contemporary cool, Golden creates and excavates a personal mythology and captures fleeting moments through color, light and form—making the ephemeral eternal. Embodying 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. Through cartoonish facial expressions and flabby flesh, Golden’s 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. Family dynamics, Jewish heritage, and queer identity influence her choices in using certain patterns to evoke cultural or emotional resonance. She earned her a BFA in Fine Art and Art History from University of Arizona, was trained in traditional oil painting at Florence Academy of the Arts, and studied at FIT in New York and OTIS College of Art and Design 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.

My Year at Home is a 12-piece series of oil paintings about maternal ambivalence. In an attempt to capture the ephemeral, I’ve chronicled the year in which I stepped into the role as a mother, both socially and psychologically. The characters represented in this series are ethereal, but also show signs of apathy, paranoia, and resignation. The soft, curled up body can be at times peaceful and defensive. There is a wholeness and stability within the figure, often seen nurturing small humans. This resting pose portrays intimacy while seeking autonomy. The perspective is destabilized, further inviting the viewer inside. There is a tension at play here…one between comfort and exotic, imagined and real. The idyllic images of motherhood, perpetuated by a society desperate for certainty, clash violently with the raw, messy truth. Painting My Year at Home was a way to transcend the moral obligations of everyday life. The discovery that creating life doesn’t give meaning to your own. But mostly I wanted to show women tortured by the contradictory nature of social expectations.

Exhibitions:

My Year at Home

The Middle Becomes Eclectic