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Biography
Laura Taylor is of Brazilian/American heritage and was raised primarily
in Canada with frequent intervals spent in Sao Paulo, Brazil. For the
last twelve years she has lived in New York City. Her art education has
been somewhat unconventional. After completing two years at The Ontario
College of Art in Toronto, Canada (1979-81) she moved to Quebec, taking
a year off school to live on a remote lake in northern Quebec painting,
reading the classics and teaching herself French. She attended the Universite
du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres (1982) for another year, and completed her
formal studies at the New York Studio School in New York City in 1984.
Mostly she considers herself self-taught, having spent a total of four
years in formal art education and the last twenty-three years learning
to paint through looking at art and practicing the art of painting.
Taylor has been granted residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Dorland
Artist Colony in California, and internationally, Treffpunkt Kunst, in
Austria. She was a resident at The Montana Artist's Refuge from November
2003 through July of 2004 during which time she conducted technique workshops
locally and exhibited her work in various venues in Montana. She was a
member of The Painting Center in New York City from 1997 until early 2005
during which time she acted as curator for shows of artists from across
the United States and organized international exchange exhibits between
Painting Center artists with both Ireland and Austria. She has shown her
work extensively in this country, including three solo shows in New York,
New York, shows in Providence, Rhode Island, Butte, Montana, Narrowsburg,
New York. In Europe her work has been shown in Dublin, Ireland, Ried-im-Innkreis,
Austria and Salzburg, Austria.
Taylor's work comes out of the Romanticist tradition
of the late eighteenth century. Her works shares an affinity with those
artists who were working from a state of disillusionment with their world.
Her recent paintings are large landscapes that portray vast spaces where
the presence of human beings is diminutive or entirely non-existent. Some
employ a Turneresque light and treatment of paint while others more graphic
renditions of vast spaces. In all nature is perhaps not offering the solace
and escape the viewer might be seeking.
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