About Golden
At the height of the depression in the 1930s, Sam Golden joined his uncle Leonard Bocour as a partner in Bocour Artist Colors. Leonard and Sam produced hand-ground oil colors for artists. The shop on 15th Street in Manhattan became a hangout for artists from the 1930s through the early 1950s. Artists such as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler and Jack Levine would go to the shop to visit with Leonard, talk to Sam and get paint. During one visit an artist gave Sam a honey like resin and asked if it could be made into paint. Sam recognized that this idea would require experimentation as the early batches of the new paint seemed to dry before the paint was applied. Between 1946 and 1949, and after much trial and error, the first artist acrylic paint was ready for production. One of the earliest artists to use the paint "Magna", was Morris Louis. Sam eventually developed a more popular waterborne version of the acrylic, "Aquatec." He continued to refine the chemistry of acrylic paints working with artists for the next 20 years to find what worked and what did not.
After 30 years in the paint making business, Sam retired and moved to picturesque New Berlin, New York. Sam, however, quickly grew bored with retirement and decided at the age of 67 to come out of retirement. Creating paints for the professional artist, Golden actively searches out ways to maintain the highest pigment loading among all major manufacturers today. The colours are clearly defined by this major characteristic. Golden has always concentrated its efforts with professional artists. Typically, the professional customer is looking for strength of color (or high pigment load) and consistency of product. This consistency from batch to batch allows the customer to make some good inferences about the working properties of the same color or range of products. Meeting the demands of professionals has encouraged Golden to pursue the highest standard of quality for all their products. Golden has also developed a range of mediums, gels, varnishes and other additives to ensure that artists using Golden have the broadest range of techniques and colour options possible. The extensive range of mediums and additives are built to excel in both optical and handling qualities. Golden Artist Colors take pride in being ‘tool makers’ for some of the most talented visual artists in the world. They produce innovative and imaginative tools for artists by simply listening to artists and providing tools to meet their needs. Many of Golden’s products, even entire product lines, were first created in response to the needs of an individual. Golden places great value on the close, personal relationships they have developed with artists over the years, and continue to involve artists in support of many aspects of their Company. This on-going support now extends to providing an extensive network of support material and technical resources that benefits artists, art conservators and the various art practices in place today. Langridge Artist Colours is proud to be the exclusive Australian distributor for Golden. Both companies hold a similar approach to their customers; That is for artists to be in complete control of their creative process they must have the highest standard of quality materials to choose from and the technical support to make informed decisions about them.
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