A. J. Taylor’s paintings reveal themselves slowly. To see one must be prepared to look – and willingly join the artist in his appraisal of the world through paint. His scenes, often purposefully mundane, are not so much about location as the processes of seeing.
Like the impressionist artists that have inspired him, Taylor’s aesthetic goal is to test our visual limits, making us complicit in the visual dynamic between experience and form. At the margins, his images often resist resolution, reminding us that, to make sense of our surrounds, we must constantly frame and reframe our view.
From a distance, the pictures offer glimpses of recognition and suggest familiar contexts. Up close, however, they fragment into abstracted codes, where painterly blips and dashes both camouflage and signal the precarious nature of vision.
Taylor lives and works in the hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Since 2002, he has been a regular exhibitor in solo and group exhibitions in Brisbane and Sydney, and has been represented at the Melbourne Art Fair.
In 2011 Taylor was a finalist in the Wynne Prize, he has also recently been a finalist in other prizes inlcuding the Fleurieu Art Prize, the John Glover Art Prize and the Hawkesbury Art Prize. His work is represented in Australia’s Artbank collection; the BHP Billiton, Macquarie Bank and the Museum of Brisbane; and in private collections throughout Australia and internationally.
