John Golding’s career as a painter is closely linked to his profession as a scholar of Modern European and American art. Alongside painting, he lectured at the Courtauld Institute of Art and became a lone voice in support of American abstraction in an otherwise European-centric institution. The scale and the passages of color in CV reflect similar concerns to artists such as Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko, whom he admired tremendously. Golding often likened his painting to the human body and tried to capture the way that "light falls on the body and explores surface." CV establishes tension between surface and depth as the two-colored panels reinforce the flatness of the canvas while also appearing to sit on top of the colored band that surrounds them. Golding marveled at the way cubist artists could "fold space," and here he uses light and color to play with spatial depth. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2020
