'This year, thanks to valued assistance with the logistics from RBSA President Viv Astling, I have included three of my pictures in the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Members, Associates and Graduates Exhibition.'
George Taylor.
2010
115cm x 115cm
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
Patricia Preece writing in the Leamington Studio Artists, Autumn/Winter 2010 edition of 'Artspace' journal, on the LSA Summer Show 2010.
"Here, as always, George explores what is felt rather than what is seen - he is not concerned with the surface of things. His art tries to take his sensed world and commit it to canvas so that it can be communicated to the viewer as a feeling. His exhibited work, Indiana, is a vivid splash of yellow populated with symbols that hint at meaning. It is common in George's work to see the abstraction played out within the context of a physical landscape but, what is interesting here is that there is little evidence of any physical context. Wonderfully, he has created an abstract work with few clues to interfere with the sense that the painting should be felt rather than interpreted and understood. Seen in that context, I believe that this is an incredibly successful piece that has the power to excite."
© Patricia Preece
For Catalonia
2010
67cm x 48 cm
Card, tissue paper, cord, and acrylic paint
Although the title of this piece might seem to paraphrase George Orwell’s book Homage to Catalonia,
I made it essentially as a tribute rather than a homage to the late Catalonian artist Antoni Tapies,
whose extraordinarily singular and highly distinctive, visceral work has fascinated and enthralled
me since I first encountered it in the early nineteen ‘sixties.
I was already aware of his work, but seeing five major Tapies works in the pivotal 54/64
Painting and Sculpture of a Decade exhibition at the original Tate Gallery sixty years ago, in
April/June 1964, left a profound and lasting impression on me.
Tapies demonstrated that it is possible to create complex, powerful images from ordinary
everyday materials, the detritus of human activity almost, often with a rawness and directness that underscore the physicality and temporality of human existence.
Sometimes in visual art, words serve no useful purpose, they just get in the way, and complicate
things, the work is best left to speak for itself.
George Taylor
June 2024
Mixed media on deep canvas in custom built frame with museum glass.
This artwork is from my Penwith Suite, although it is non-figurative, it has its roots in the dramatic recollection of seeing marine distress flares off the Cornish coast, and witnessing the response of the lifeboat services and the coastguard.
Being a three dimensional construction, it is concerned with actual physical space, so it is actually a wall-hung sculpture which can be viewed from a variety of angles within a virtually 180 degree compass.
I have made three dimensional constructions for over sixty years, and in 1963 a large white painted construction which I made with Michael Baldwin, (later a co-founder of the influential conceptual art group Art and Language), was shown in an exhibition for the, at that time, ambitious and now archaic, sum of forty-five guineas.
In 1966, another fairly large white construction of mine was exhibited at the former Bear Lane Gallery in Oxford, then a pioneering platform for modern British art, and Terry Frost became interested in those I was making in my studio at around the same time.
Flashflare will be included in our forthcoming studio exhibition here at Charlbury from 4th to 12th May, along with the four large Big Deepcoast Suite, which comprise the culmination of my Elemental Series and other works from that series.
George Taylor
April 2024
Of Wingbones and Talons
2009
Framed Size: 81cms x 63cms Approximate revealed image
size: 54cms x 36.5cms
Mixed Media on heavyweight handmade paper, within white painted timber frame and wide white mount
Sometimes, a title can provide a portal for access to an
idea or an ‘understanding ‘of an artwork, without being overly descriptive or
subjective. Possibly in the viewers mind, moving
the image from perceived abstract towards an abstracted thematic.
This though does not suggest or imply a literal
interpretation, which might be counterproductive.
A painting or construction is an assemblage of individual
component parts, like words in a poem, or sounds in a piece of music, or the
various natural or human-caused elements that make up a landscape painting.
But a landscape does not have to be viewed from a single
fixed viewpoint, it can be explored in multiple ways, as a journey or a memory
for example. The sum of the parts can become more than the whole, the subject
need not be described literally in precise hard-won
detail, but may be suggested as an encompassing, holistic experience, and in
the process becomes new and different.
A flash of beak, or the blur of a wing, a roughly hewn nest or the wayward dynamic of flight, a
momentary streak of light or the nerve-piercing pitch of a bird call, may be
evoked as a mark or a colour - a fragment, indicated, rather than unequivocally
and rigidly delineated – more about feeling and experience than prescription or
description.
George Taylor
December 2023
What Strange Things Are These
2021
Overall size including frame: 80cms x 100cms
Acrylic paint, coloured pencil and balsa wood on heavyweight handmade paper set in a wide white mount and enclosed in a white painted timber frame.
This is entirely of itself, and there is no deliberate or conscious external reference, so it may be considered ‘abstract' by definition.
It is concerned with surface dynamics, and two-dimensional tensions within a rectangle, and has much to do with a sense of ambiguity and asymmetry.
As is increasingly the case these days, visual art is becoming preoccupied with often transient, circumscribed political and ideological issues.
I have no interest in these things - for me, the formal challenges of image making are sufficient and enduring.
‘I think the essential nature of modern art is it’s being secular, it’s being done by an individual to satisfy his own inner deepest sense of integrity.
It’s the first art that doesn’t work on tribal understanding.’
Robert Motherwell 1915-1991
George Taylor
October 2023
Idiot Wind
2016
Framed dimensions 79cms x 98cms
Acrylic with mixed media on Saunders Waterford 300lbs Heavyweight Paper in deep mount within a white painted timber frame.
August 2023
Matter of Time
2006
Mixed media and acrylic on board.
Image size: 51cms x 61cms in wide white coloured mount and natural hardwood frame.
This painting was made via the technique I evolved over thirty years ago, whereby a ground of hard and soft pastel is built up in layers using generous amounts of fixative, sometimes to the point of liquidity. When dry, the ground can then be reduced or cut back into using sharp instruments to reveal the previously hidden layers of colours and textures.
The use of fixative throughout the process, allows acrylic paint to adhere to the surface, which when dry, can, if desired, be cut away and removed and other shapes left in place, thus producing an impression of shapes suspended or floating in a pictorial space.
The title is essentially, non-descriptive, but alludes to Quantum Mechanics, and the continuing quest to unify the four fundamental components of the Universe: Space -Time - Matter and Energy into a single theory, the so-called ‘Theory of Everything.’
Quantum Move Image size 50.5cms x 76.00cms also from 2006, on Gallery 4 of my website explores the same theme, but is deliberately less structured, less earthbound, more nebulous, and more akin possibly, to the unimaginably vast Universe science tells us, exists out there, way beyond our relatively insignificant, as Carl Sagan put it, ‘Pale Blue Dot’ of a planet.
As with all painting, the image must be viewed at first hand to be fully assimilated, so possibly contrary to the impression given in the photographic image, there are no elements of collage in the painting.
George Taylor
February 2023
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| Click the image to enlarge 2022 Acrylic, painted cardboard and timber dowel rods on canvas
This three-dimensional wall hung work, one of the four largest pieces from the Large Elemental Series and part of the Big Deepcoast Suite, incorporates a technique I have evolved whereby significant areas of white primed canvas are left exposed to form fluid, relatively amorphic shapes that are defined by the surrounding blue rather than being innate in themselves. These irregular shapes contrast and interact with the more angular, applied sculptural elements that are formed from carefully tearing and manipulating several types of heavy duty cardboard, and then painting these in ultramarine with the edges picked out in white and with the intersecting, painted dowel rods. This suggests the natural large scale juxtaposition between hard and soft elements, as in the complex dynamic interactions of coastal forces and as is usual in this series, the content and colour range are deliberately restricted to achieve maximum compositional impact and to minimise unnecessary detraction. As with the other works in the series, the piece can be viewed from varying frontal angles to emphasise and to some extent simulate, the phenomenological experience that influenced its making. Essentially though, the piece is a self-contained three dimensional abstract construct, an aesthetic expression that broadly alludes to formidable elemental agencies. George Taylor October 2022 |
Metal, dowel rods, cardboard and acrylic on canvas in deep, white painted timber frame
64cms x 64cms
2022
The coast of the British Isles is littered with shipwrecks
of almost every type, and the coast of Cornwall because of its location and topography,
inevitably has its fair share.
Although born in Devonport, the untutored painter Alfred
Wallis is often considered as ‘Cornish,’ as for most of his life he lived in St
Ives, the fact that he lived in St Ives was fortuitous, as it was there in 1928
that the painters Ben Nicholson and Cristopher Wood ‘discovered’ him – had he
been living elsewhere, it is quite possible that he might have remained
unknown.
His various paintings on the theme of the Wreck of the
Alba, graphically depict that eponymous steam propelled vessel as it was
quite literally being overwhelmed by massive waves at Porthmeor Beach on 31st
January 1938. Despite the valiant efforts of the St Ives lifeboat, which itself
capsized and was washed on to the rocks, five members of Alba’s crew were lost.
Most of the remains of the vessel have been washed away, but the boiler is
still discernible at exceptionally low tides.
Vastly different, from Wallis’ powerful and expressive
painterly recollections of an event, the aftermath of which, he almost
certainly witnessed, are the incisive, mostly black and white photographs of wrecks of mainly, but not
exclusively, sailing craft around the coast of Devon and Cornwall taken since
1869 by successive generations of the Gibson family of the Scilly Isles.
Wreckpiece, is different again, and although
essentially an abstraction, allows for an imaginative response in the viewer,
the various elements of its composition perhaps ‘standing in’ for objects,
rather than imitating them in meticulous detail. The piece of found, weathered
metal, for example, is visually interesting and plays a key part in the
composition, but at the same time may serve to represent a piece of marine
wreckage – possibly a remnant of a boiler, or a prow and the broken cylinder,
possibly a funnel.
The intersecting rods are essentially an abstract,
sculptural construct, serving to hold the image firmly in place, but may also
serve as co-ordinates, indicating the location of a shipwreck.
George Taylor
April 2022
Mixed Media
2021
In a deep timber, white painted, custom-built frame: H 41cm W 120cm D 13cm
This work fits within the large body of three-dimensional wall hung work that I have been engaged in for the past four years or so, it is closely related to my now extensive Elemental Series and to the pieces I have been making that are informed by direct experience of forceful, dynamic coastal interaction.
The idea of making a work from part of the neck of an old Sitar led me to think about linearity, and as the wooden remnant has some subtle decorative features, these reminded me a little of Edwardian and Victorian seaside piers, but also made me think about the meandering, convoluted, natural linearity of coastlines, and the straight and rigid linearity of the seaside pier.
But above all, of the opposing linearities of coastline and pier, and the interactive physical dynamics that a substantial, fixed manufactured structure causes when intruding at a more or less a ninety-degree angle into a massive elemental, global liquid phenomenon – the sea.
An immersive, ever mobile, natural substance influenced by the winds and the tides, which swirls and eddies around and amongst the human-made engineered structure, that has the potential to overwhelm it – and sometimes does.
In symbolic terms, another example of liminal interaction, of the coastal interplay of hard and soft, an interpretative, three-dimensional, interfusive allusion to phenomenological experience rather than a prescriptive illusion.
George Taylor
February 2022
This mixed media painting emanated from the extensive series of works I made for my ‘Flamborough Series’ in the late ‘eighties. I had spent a considerable amount of time exploring and experiencing the coastal landscape around Flamborough Head in preparation for an exhibition organised by the former Humberside County Council in 1991. The exhibition took place at two venues, the gallery at Bridlington Library and fittingly, at Flamborough Library.
(Since 1996 Flamborough Head has been administratively within the remit of the East Riding of Yorkshire Council)
I deliberately made the subjects comprising most of the pictures recognisable as distinctive features of this incredibly visually stimulating coastal landscape, as in 'Eve Rock'. But some of the pieces, I later reworked to emphasise, not so much, the distinctive physical topography, but the all-consuming impact of the immersive coastal weather, the dramatic light and the complexity of seabird flight that I had experienced during my walks amongst and around that remarkably singular coastal location. ‘Rain, Sea and Wind’ was one of these reworked pieces, as was ‘White Rock’.
I had also walked the coast path to observe the Old Harry Rocks formation in Dorset, and had taken a boat from Swanage to view these stunning, naturally sculpted rock formations from the sea and course, the well known Needles outcrop off the Isle of Wight, which is punctuated by the red and white banded, man made lighthouse, like a full stop, whereas the lighthouse at Flamborough is set back on the headland.
These formations are mainland chalk promontories, but on the west coast of Scotland we had driven across Mull, taken the ferry from Fionnphort to Iona, and then on by small boat to Staffa, as it happened, in spectacular, squally weather conditions, to experience at first hand the approach to that small, remote island, up to and into the imposing Fingal’s Cave, with its architectonic hexagonal volcanically formed basalt columns. This small landmass was possibly, long ago in geological time, a part of a much larger island which included Mull and Iona.
There is something intensely dramatic about approaching these massive geological configurations, formed by the erosive action of wind and wave over countless millennia, from the seaward aspect, but Flamborough Head offered such a wide range of visual interpretations, that I decided to make most of the topographical paintings from the landward view, but sometimes, also from the shore margins between tides.
George Taylor
August 2021
Fjordpiece 2021, a wall hung multi-dimensional work.
Image size: 55cms X 75cms
Paper, acrylic paint, cardboard, and balsa wood on heavyweight paper mounted on to board.
For the past few years, I have been exploring the colour blue, not entirely for its own sake, but also in relation to white.
Blue and white have a natural affinity and attract us at a subliminal elemental level, possibly because they are the colours of the space immediately above our heads and of the waters that surround us.
The blue affects and influences the white and vice versa.
Much of my recent work has a marine, oceanic feel, and this is far from accidental.
As a species, at a critical point in our evolution we emerged from the waters and began the long transition to becoming land creatures.
The constantly changing liminal space, between hard and soft, the sea and the land, the deep blue of the waves and the white spume as they break against the land, fascinates us and we are drawn to it inexorably.
Following yet another unimaginable passage of time, the continents will have shifted and the sea/shores we are familiar with will be elsewhere.
Where will our species be then?
George Taylor
June 2021
2016, Mixed Media on Board
Size 25cms x 44cms, including frame 50cms x 68.5cms.
This painting employs a variety of mixed media techniques to visually describe the spatial dynamics of an incoming coastal storm and the relative insignificance of humans in relation to such powerful natural forces.
I have physically experienced many such coastal storms, especially when researching my 'Flamborough Series' in the very early 'eighties, but a particularly dramatic and thus, memorable instance took place on the North Cornish Coast at Portreath in the 1970's and was essentially the source for this picture.
Given this, it is not difficult to understand why Turner felt he had to lash himself bodily to a ship's mast in order to gain the direct experience necessary to paint 'Snow -Storm, Steam-Boat off a Harbour Mouth'.
In such circumstances, the portrayal of detail is futile, as the experience is all-consuming and overwhelming - only the controlled energy of expressionism will serve the purpose.
George Taylor
February 2021
This work is a three-dimensional visual composite of several locations on the Penwith coast where the tidal surges interact dynamically and dramatically with the hard, geological landscape.
Visual art that does not pretend to be a constructed representation of something else in
the real world but is itself a discrete entity in the real world, should like music, have an
autonomous, ‘life of its own.’ It should have an energy, a vitality, should excite the senses
and the emotions, hopefully, beyond self-conscious thought and words.
Unless there is an immediate and lasting connection with the senses and vitally, directly
with the observers’ nervous system, it is likely to serve no purpose beyond the decorative.
The late American abstract expressionist painter Franz Kline, when asked to explain his
abstraction said: 'I’ll answer you in the same way Louis Armstrong does when they ask him
what it means when he blows his trumpet. Louis says, Brother, if you don’t get it, there is
no way I can tell you.’
There is a tendency to over intellectualise painting and art in general and of course, this the
territory of the critics and the curators, but frankly, with the entity in front of you, you
either respond or you do not. There may of course be degrees of response, and provided
you do not automatically reject within a few seconds, as many do, more complete and
satisfying responses may occur given prolonged engagement.
However, as Louis firmly implied, there is no way that he, or anyone else can explain, or
teach you how you should respond, or what you should feel, but the receptive viewer will
know instinctively if that vital connection has been made.
From a suite of four paintings: Encounter, Odyssey, Enigma and Quest, on Gallery 7 of my
website.
George Taylor
October 2020
