The collection of work featured in the artist spotlight by Andy Taylor are colorful and evocative, peaceful and enduring, familiar and different. Familiar brushstrokes have changed shape and form, taking a more abstract, calligraphic approach, like the light of an eclipse or a forest on a breezy day. As always, Taylor is sparked with an idea with which he passionately explores, with the idea that “many strokes and many colors can add up to or contribute to one idea.” In this interview, Taylor gives us rare insight into his work and process, his humor and humility.
Andy Taylor has been painting the Colorado Plateau and the backyards of Carbondale for fifty-five years. When he started, he shares that everything he saw felt new. He also shares that now, everything feels new. The world around Taylor, viewed through a lens of awe, curiosity and wonder, is a blend of experience and presence. “I have just looked deeper and wider, have witnessed changes in seasons, in growth, in death, and I have sketched and painted some places 10 or 20 times — nothing ever looks the same.” He continues, “After fifty-five years of painting, one might assume that I know my craft and that I have a plan for everything – I have neither. The more I explore painting, the more I wander; the more I learn that there is more to discover. The process has been and is exciting and challenging.”
Taylor chooses not to paint the obvious peaks and icons that surround him in his homestate. Instead, he chooses quieter moments, ones that are unsuspecting but contain a quality that make the artist stop. His process starts with a curiosity and presence. Each idea is translated through the processes and mediums used by Taylor – pen and ink; oil pastel; colored pencil; canvas. “There is a conversation, a digestion, that happens as a scene goes from observation, to drawing, to memory, to painting and to exhibition,” explains Taylor. “Every stage has a different life, a unique experience. My purpose is not to arrive at a likeness of the original scene, but to find that particular quality of the scene that made me stop.”
Taylor has an affinity for naming paintings for exhibitions with evocative titles in different themes: words that all start with Q; titles in Spanish. The new works for the Ann Korologos Gallery feature on Taylor are no exception. When you hear “Bow Tie” and “Sheep Shank” and “Sheet Bend,” can you guess the current curiosity? Knots. Each of these paintings feature the names of knots, because, shares Taylor, “the strings of colors seemed to be like twine.” These themed titles are part of the humor of Taylor, and not every work will be named in such fashion. Sometimes they name themselves, like “Last Leaf Leaving.” “I have never, ever thought of choosing a title before I have finished – or almost finished – a painting,” adds in Taylor. “Things are sometimes revealed in a painting which can lead one to a title, and sometimes a title is just a way to distinguish one painting from another.”