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Malcom Taylor
“from studio to gallery”
I visited Malcolm Taylor in his studio some months ago. Having
seen his work many times before on social media it was a
pleasure to get up close and discover the way he approaches
his work by way of reading his brush work. The paintings I had
seen were ‘almost formal abstractions’ although earlier in his
painting life he was essentially a figurative landscape painter.
He mentioned to me how the St Ives in Cornwall had inspired
him, no doubt assisted by his knowledge of the history of art
from St Ives School (i.e. James Whistler, Walter Sickert, Motimer
Mempes,Thomas Millie Dow, Edward Simmons and Howard
Russel ). What Malcolm may not have known is that Sweden’s
most renown artist (Anders Zorn) also painted in St Ives, which
had become a veritable magnet for painters and sculptors alike
(i.e Barbara Hepworth).
ref:PMT20
Malcolm is a prolific painter, and most of his work is on the small
side, but beautifully presented. However, his natural talent for
‘drawing’ is less known. Whilst in the studio he shown me a very
large number of sketch books full of drawings that were quite
beautifully created in charcoal, pencil and the odd one pen and
ink, so many in fact that I simply did not have time to see them
all, as each one was a page stopper.
Malcolm Taylor is a very active artist and a supporter of
other artist fellows by way of his close involvement with the
Manchester Fine Art Academy, which at the time of writing is the
Vice-President. I do hope to be able to visit his studio again, and
really spend time thumbing through the pages of those wonderful
sketchbooks. In the meantime here what he has to say about his
paintings and his methodology:
‘Many of my paintings are derived from an ongoing
exploration of the landscape but, with my purely
abstract paintings, I do not have a fixed image in mind
when I start, preferring to let the imagery develop and
evolve through the process of painting. I have never
restricted myself to working in one particular medium
and continually find myself switching between acrylics,
traditional oils and both soft and oil pastels depending
on what I am trying to achieve. Brushes, sticks, fingers
and thumbs are used to scrape, score and scratch marks
onto the surface. I continually redraw, rearrange and
obliterate passages in a desire to achieve a balance of
colour and form. The end result is what is important
and I may use collage, mixed media, dripping, scraping,
drawing with sticks – anything to achieve a spontaneous
and lively painting that is harmonious in composition,
tone and colour.. “
ref:PMT21
all images ©Malcolm Taylor
Photograph by Denis Taylor ©Tubes magazine 2018
Summary by Denis Taylor ©painters Tubes magazines