Australian Art Collector Issue 21 July - September 2002 p. 45

Previews

Howard Taylor
Galerie Düsseldorf, Perth
1 September – 6 October 2002

Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery
12 September, 2002 – 26 January, 2003

"It may be the last opportunity most collectors will have to acquire a work by Taylor before they pass into the museums and millionaires only category".

The late Howard Taylor would have been more than pleased by the growing national interest in his work. While the art world was increasingly concerned with the ephemeral, Taylor made art to last. The great subject of his later years was light, the most fragile, fugitive presence for any artist. Yet every painting or sculpture was first and foremost a problem in endurance. Wood had to be jointed and aged to perfection so that Taylor’s surfaces never shifted their shape. Paint had to be applied in ever more precisely refined layers. Only the most stable of forms could carry the intense contrast needed to conjure up the eternal present of light. In pursuit of this, Taylor bent his immense craftsmanship to the almost impossible task of abolishing the image – so as to leave the presence of light alone.

Light Figure 1995 Oil on Masonite 3 Panels Overall 13.6 x 30.4 cm (Private Collection)

In September Galerie Düsseldorf will present an exhibition, mainly of studies and maquettes, tracing Taylor’s evolution towards this goal. Study for Sky, 1998, shows his intense gaze dissecting the pale lemon, blue and purple light flooding around the edges of a field of luminous, grey clouds. Their forms are still clear but it is the diffuse light, filling the frame like liquid silver that catches Taylor’s interest. Then, in the painting Sun Figure Study, 1995, the same range of luminous colours has moved to form concentric rings around a white circle at its centre. Not just any white of course, Taylor painstakingly tuned his paintings till the color progressions were exactly right, the perfect equivalent of natural sensation.

Sky 1998/99 Pastel on Museum Board 22.9 x 30.4 cm

These studies led to large circular relief paintings, such as Light Source Reverse, circa 1994, in the collection of the Art Gallery of WA. A massive raised circular surface in super-subtle neutral grey, is bounded by a narrow band of blue purple an inch or so further from the eye. This reversal causes the eye to search for, and find, light across the grey surface. Taylor often used such effects. It is never clear whether they are optical or, as I believe, poetic, the most complete presentation of light as the final metaphor for life. In another piece at Galerie Düsseldorf, Still Life Black Figure, 1994, the same thought is applied to the presence of an object which becomes a simple black rectangle surrounded by light – yet it is absolutely present. This exhibition must be seen. It may be the last opportunity most collectors will have to acquire a work by Taylor before they pass into the "museums and millionaires only category". The Art Gallery of WA is planning a massive apotheosis for him in 2003/05.

Still Life with Black Figure 1994 Acrylic and Oil on Canvas 92 x 152 cm (Private Collection)

Fortunately a group of Taylor’s large pieces will be seen in this year’s Asia Pacific Triennial including Light Source Reverse. (Art Gallery of Western Australia) and Space Screen, 1984, from the Bankwest collection, a relief with two large horizontal panels sloping away from the eye slightly below its centre. Across both a central band of forest greens shades off at each side to pure greenish black, the deepest possible shadow. Forest light and forest space make marvellous poetry.

Light Source Reverse (Study) Chalk on Paper and Composition Board 17.8 x 17.8 x 1 cm

Dr. David Bromfield