John W. Golden (Born 1967) was born in a family of artists. His father was a folk singer and storyteller while his mother was a watercolorist. He showed interest in art at an early age and his love for art made his school work to suffer. When he was just 10 years old, his mother opened a gallery, Golden Gallery, to sell and show her work. This is where Golden spent much of his afternoon hours building model buildings out of scrap mat board. He developed a love for the unintentional design that exists in urban environments.
Golden began to work in linoleum block printing, and sold his artwork in his mother's gallery. An interest in regional history and the success of those prints led him to create a series of hand-tinted ink and pen reproductions of the North Carolina Lighthouses. He spent a major part of his time hand tinting lighthouses until when he was in high school, where he developed love for Photography. Golden obtained a degree in Graphic Design at a time when desktop computers were introduced. A summer job in the building industry in the art department afforded him access to the computer lab where he learned how to use the Apple Macintosh and the few programs that were available then. He then went out into the professional world of Graphic Design. Golden still works in the Golden Gallery. He creates his digital illustration full-time and somehow manages to squeeze some digital photography in there as well. Currently, framed John W. Golden art pieces are widely sought after by many corporate and private collectors.