Golden Moments

It's A Wonderful Life 

© 2007 Carole Moore

 It's Saturday at the Cotton Exchange in Wilmington, and customers, their bags crammed with one-of-a-kind goodies, meander through the loosely connected series of eight buildings adjacent to the waterfront.

 Upstairs, in a red-brick building with as many twists and turns as an Agatha Christie novel, Mary Ellen Golden surveys the art gallery she runs with her son, John.

 Her age belied only by her close-cropped silver hair, Golden spends her days surrounded by the people and things she loves best: her family, her art and her personal corner of the Tar Heel state. Raised in rural Rose Hill, about 40 miles from Wilmington, she remains intimately connected to the city she remembers so vividly from her childhood.

But when she talks about her youth, the focus falls not on her obvious affection for the gentle rhythm of the country town in which she grew up or the nearby port city. Instead, her mind's eye looks back and sees her father guiding her small hand as she turns a tracing of his thumb into a dog.

 For Mary Ellen Golden, the memory defines her life.

Oil and Acrylics

   From the time she first copied the shapes placed before her, Golden felt comfortable with her fingers curled around a crayon, pencil or brush. Her mother wanted those fingers on piano keys, and Golden acquiesced, but only because an hour a day spent banging out scales bought art lessons. For Golden, it was a fair trade and the way she learned to paint in oils. When it came time to choose a career, she tilted naturally in the direction of art, but things didn't go as planned.

 "I went off to Duke to be an artist and became an English teacher; I met a guy who went to Duke to become an architect and came out a civil engineer," she says.

 Golden says college is "what made me an English major." She remembers an art instructor who told students to grab some paste and magazines and make collages. The same instructor created paintings by riding his bicycle across a canvas on the floor. Golden found his techniques bizarre.

 "To me -- that was not art," she says.

 She switched to teaching. After graduation, she followed her new husband, John C., to his job in West Virginia, where she taught for a few months, then quit to have their first child -- daughter Martha. Golden returned to school shortly thereafter to pursue another passion -- studying French -- and remembers holding the baby as she practiced her vocabulary. It's an influence she believes the now-grown Martha took to heart -- she's a French teacher at the N.C. School of the Arts.

Their son, also named John, walked firmly in his mother's footsteps, settling into his life as both an artist and photographer. Together, mother and son work out of their Cotton Exchange gallery, where Golden has kept a studio for just over 28 years.

Virginia Fouche' Bolton

 Just as she transitioned from student to wife to mother, Golden has also moved from heavy oil paints to acrylics, eventually taking lessons after watching another artist use them. Unlike oils, working with acrylics requires the artist to paint much faster and more efficiently since they dry so quickly. Although she liked acrylics at the time, as it turned out, Golden still had not found her niche in the art world. It took the city of Charleston and one special teacher to bring her full circle.

 With its stately old mansions and reputation for both charm and old-fashioned Southern manners, Charleston became home for a while to the Golden family. She worked with macrame' and crafted little beads with which to decorate her macrame' projects.

 A large city compared to Wilmington, Charleston boasts a diverse artists' community. Soon Golden met and became friends with legendary Charleston artist, Virginia Fouche' Bolton.

 A celebrated watercolorist, Bolton, who died in 2004, was noted for her studies of historic Charleston homes and joyful paintings of the city's colorful characters at rest and play. Golden caught the watercolor bug from her friend and mentor and never shook it off.

 "That was 1975 and I haven't done an oil or acrylic since," she says. But that's a good thing for watercolor enthusiasts because Golden did more than simply pick up the technique. She mastered it. So well, in fact, she made an instructional video that teaches the art of watercolor painting. Although she sells the video in her gallery, Golden confesses it was a one-time experience not likely to be repeated. Still, she stays fascinated by the process.

 "Water will do a lot by itself," she says. But the paint, the paper, the water, even the technique and training, are worth nothing without the talent and inspiration.

 Golden has the talent. The inspiration she finds everywhere she looks, including the ordinary. "I see something, like the way the light hits flowers on the front walk and every now and then a butterfly lights," she says. She preserves those moments by photographing them when she can and uses the pictures to spark her creativity.

 "I have a lot of photographs," Golden admits and adds that her husband also carries a camera to capture inspirational moments for his wife when they are apart.

A Touch of Orchid, A Sweep of Ochre

 The walls of Golden Art Gallery are illustrative of both its name and namesake. A bright, cheerful space hung with original and print watercolors, photographs and handmade jewelry, the ambience reflects an airiness and sense of sunlight, even though the gallery itself has no windows.

 The sun peeks in, though, through the framed studies of seabirds, fishing boats echoed in the water's depths and gentle-hued houses nestled among dunes spiked with cattails. Much of Golden's work mirrors her love affair with the beaches that skirt Wilmington: Carolina, Wrightsville and Kure.

 Golden likes the soft, traditional pastels associated with the ocean and beach living. Her watercolors and prints, some framed and lining the walls, others packaged and offered for sale in bins, reflect the perfect medium for her art. As far as the perfect place to live, there's no need to even ask.

 "We live here because it's home," she says of her family. "As we wandered we always knew we'd come back to Wilmington."

Summer Pleasures Remembered

 Ask Golden her favorite among the many prints and paintings she's created over the years and she's quick with her answer. It's called "Summer Pleasures Remembered" and depicts a beach cottage. Golden says customers see the print and tell her that's the house they want to build. Sadly, the real home and inspiration for the work, constructed in the early 1900s, was destroyed by one of the coast's frequent hurricanes. The print sold out ages ago, but Golden still has the framed original in her shop.

 "I've put a ridiculous price on it," she says. "I guess I don't really want to sell it."

 Golden's work reflects many of the area's architectural landmarks. Orton Plantation, a well-known pier, a view of the Wilmington waterfront, some interesting windows -- all show up in her watercolors. There's also a sense of whimsy in two pieces featuring pelicans -- she calls them Alice and Louise -- seated on pilings in front of a marina.

 Also among Golden's many subjects is the decommissioned Battleship North Carolina, anchored permanently as a "floating museum" and World War II tribute near Wilmington. Although the idea of a battleship rendered in soft watercolors may seem slightly incongruous, it's not. Golden washes the background in the soft pinks and peaches of a rising -- or setting -- sun, which softens the hard lines of the ship and make it appear almost ethereal.

Color Her World

  When asked the best thing that ever happened to her, Golden has a quick answer: she married her husband. John -- the husband, not the son -- retired from his career as an engineer and moved on to his second career as a folk musician and story-teller. In their free time, they enjoy their three  grandchildren.

 It seems an idyllic life and, according to Golden, it has been. She stretches to find something that qualifies as the worst thing that ever happened to her and fails.

 "I've been very lucky," she admits.

 Golden has enjoyed a life well-spent, a good marriage, children who have grown tall and graceful in a creative and happy household. Not content to simply paint, she also teaches the art of watercolor.

 "I do my best work in front of my class," she says. "Some of my students are better than I am."

 She says teaching art allows her to grow as an artist because it reminds her of techniques she sometimes forgets on her own. And, Golden says, her students inspire her.

 But then, Golden finds inspiration in things like air and light and sky. While others bemoan the damage hurricanes leave behind, Golden remembers riding a ferry after one such hurricane struck and being fascinated by the cloud of birds that followed the boat. She then researched those birds so they could grace her paintings.

A Moment's Meaning

 Birds show up in many of Golden's works, swooping from the heavens, chasing the water as it pulls back from the sand, warily eyeing the viewer. She readily admits to a love affair with nature and paints it at almost every opportunity.

Although her work bespeaks her fondness for feathered creatures, none are seen in the quiet, quirky walkway outside her Cotton Exchange gallery. Shoppers drift in and out of Golden's gallery as she sits on a bench next to the entrance. Two young women glide by, watching their long, white dresses swish around tanned bare legs as they twirl and turn.

 "You look beautiful," Golden offers.

 "It's for my wedding," one says as the two consider the movement of the fabric catching the air. Golden smiles while she traces their paths back to the shop to try on yet more wedding dresses. 

 "I like to capture moments that mean something to people," she says. "That is what I do."

 Although inside a building, Golden's eyes reflect the impossible: clouds the color of soft, white cotton, trailing across the sky like a summer wedding dress worn by a woman in love. And beneath those clouds, a limitless horizon of ocean stretches out in a slash of blue, sparkling and golden and kissed by the sun.

 She sees what others do not, but that is not surprising. Mary Ellen Golden is, and always has been, an artist.