Islands is a space for projection, a collection of paintings that picture our desires, disappointments and the shimmering veneer of idealism.
Michael Taylor mimics the immediate and gestural language of the drawing to develop scenes and characters in his painted work. Removed from its purely observational qualities, drawing becomes a projection of the artist’s intuition, imagination and memory. Representational and figurative elements in Taylor’s paintings create narrative frameworks that are unravelled to varying degrees through abstract marking. These loose storylines are then fastened to titles that spark moments of recognition in his chronicles of masculinity, camp theatricality, personal and cultural mythology, and humanity in all its pomp and ineptitude.
Taylor lives and works in Cape Town. He graduated with a Masters in Fine Art from Stellenbosch University and has exhibited in solo and group shows internationally.
Text courtesy Chloe Reid.
