bio

Brian Dovie Golden (born 1982) is a Chicago-based African American contemporary artist and painter. His thought-provoking, emotionally-charged creations invite viewers to into the issues of race, gender, pop culture and mental health.

 This series is a purposeful blend of portraiture, abstract line sketches and bright colors, wielded as a means of inviting others to examine complex topics like mental health and hope.

 Golden is a graduate of the International Academy of Design and Technology in Chicago, with a BFA in Graphic Design/Multimedia Production.

Overview

Like a storm churning the ocean, grief has a wonderful way of bringing deeply rooted issues to the surface. my work portrays the my journey living with generalized anxiety disorder while contextualizing the pain of losing my son two years ago. The series over the last two years (2016-2018) was my therapy as I coped with tragedy, chaos, loss of faith, apathy, stress and every feeling in between.

This is a culmination of portraits and figures that give physical shape to the joyfully high and wretchedly low feelings that surround us – often both at once. I started sketching the “good” figures in 2012 to represent “angels” watching over and protecting us.

I eventually realized that “good” was only one part of a much deeper story. It is from there that my “menacing” figures took form. These figures represent everything bad lurking in the shadows of our existence – they are chaos.

What you see is more than just watercolor portraits. I want you to feel the anxiety present in each character’s reality; how pain suffocates and makes us feel helpless. I want to share a sense of how I felt and feel.

I’ve used the figures in this series (angels especially) as a reminder that God is still there even if I can’t see or feel His presence. I am still walking through this storm, but they are my reminder that storms don’t last forever.