Colin Taylor

As well as being an established painter, Colin Taylor has nearly 30 years experience of climbing and working in mountains in Europe, South America and Asia. He was born in the East Midlands and studied art and drama at Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham in the mid-eighties. His work has been exhibited throughout the UK including London, as well as New York, Washington DC, Paris, Toulouse, Cologne, and Sweden.

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Artist’s Statement, ‘Painting Uncertainty’:

I’ve been fascinated by ‘landscape’ for a long time. Why it looks the way it does? How it has evolved, been managed, used and occasionally abused? How does my personal experience of a spatial location, add significance and meaning and somehow redefine that space as ’place’? ….and can personal experience of landscape be transferred to a single visual image?

The painter renders experience into a 2D image by pushing graphite or pigment around on a surface. When combined with both physical and intellectual input, the objects characteristics switch from a perceived reality to the representational. It is representative of, but not, the landscape

For a long time, it seemed enough to say that painting … was ‘not an optical experience but an emotional one’. Over time, I’ve come to doubt the completeness of that statement simply because it seems to discount the evolving philosophical, physiological, technological, environmental and economic terrain upon which I stand and now only seems to be a partial explanation. Paintings do not directly express the artists experienced emotions, but rather the idea of emotion.

How we perceive and represent individual experience of landscape today, has come a long way since Cezanne first articulated a visual proposal that ‘sensation’ had a direct role to play in creative output. That is not to deny the huge achievement of defining the problem of how one paints the experience of standing on the slopes of Mont St Victoire. Fortunately, for all of us today he didn’t find the solution….. it’s still out there.

Exhibitions:

2020
‘Aysen’ The Embassy of Chile, London.

2019
Chimera Gallery, Ireland
‘Lightspace: a year in the round’, Contemporary Six / Royal exchange Theatre, Manchester
On-line Exhibition – Wendy J Levy Fine Art

2018
ArtWave, Dorset, England
Chimera Gallery, Mullingar, Ireland
Dean Clough, Halifax, England
MAFA Group show

2017
Contemporary Six Gallery, Manchester
Hicks Gallery, London.

2016
McAllister Thomas Fine Art, Surrey, UK

2015
Susan Calloway Fine Art, Washington DC, USA
Contemporary Six Gallery, Manchester, UK
Sol Art, Dublin
Hicks Gallery, London
Galerie Orenda, Paris

2014
The Ropewalk Arts Centre, Humberside
Susan Calloway Fine Art, Washington DC, USA

2013
Denbigh Arts Centre, North Wales
Denise Yapp Fine Art, Monmouth
Wendy Levy Contemporary Art, Manchester

2012
Cologne City Hall, Germany
Brenda Taylor Gallery, New York, USA

2011
Liverpool Anglican Cathedral – he exhibited nearly 40 drawings at the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, the first time a single artist had been invited to focus on the building’s architecture as subject.
Wendy Levy Contemporary Art, Manchester
Highgate Institute, London

2010
SCA Gallery, Shrewsbury

2009
Darlington Arts Centre, Teeside
Wendy Levy Contemporary Art, Manchester
‘Brantwood’, Coniston, Cumbria
Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, Cumbria
Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery, South Yorkshire
20/21 Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Derbyshire
New Greenham Arts, Newbury, Oxfordshire.

2008
Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury University, Kent
Farfield Arts Centre, Sedbergh, Cumbria
Denbigh Library and Art Gallery, Wales

Previous selected group exhibitions:

2009 ‘Imagining Landscapes’ Derby City Art Gallery
2008 ‘Directions in Drawing’ Brindley Arts Centre, Runcorn
2007 ’Changing 8’ Liverpool Hope University (drawings)
1993 Oriel Gallery, Clwyd (3 person show)
1991 Gallerie Impact, Albi, Toulouse, France
1990 Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. (Touring Exhibition)
1987 Galleri Lang, Malmo, Sweden.

Throughout 2007/8 he worked on a re-interpretation of Thomas West’s original viewing ‘stations’ adapted from ‘A guide to the Lakes of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire’ published in 1778. This culminated in a series of nine solo exhibitions entitled ‘A short walk in the big landscape’ that toured England in 2008/09. Colin Taylor and his paintings of the Lake District were featured on BBC One’s ‘Countryfile’.