News
A Modern Tradition: Striking Essex Landscapes Captured in
High-Quality Prints
Spectacular images of familiar Essex countryside are included
high-impact prints to be launched by an internationally sucessful
Essex based artist at Reeman's Fine Art Auctioneers in Colchester
in November.
Stephen Taylor studied Constable a postgraduate at Essex
university, and was a visiting lecturer at Colchester School of Art
and resident artist at Felsted school. He turned professional in
the early 1990's and developed his own vision of modern landscape
painting. His paintings are now in private and corporate
collections in Britain and around the world.
His work combines traditional oil methods with digital photo
analysis to create striking contemporary images that reveal that
true beauty of the Essex countryside." The places I paint can be
found within a mile or two of almost everyone's home in the
county." He says, "They are ordinary places, but if you open your
eyes, you can go back again and again to such spots and nature will
always have something new to show you."
True to his word, he spent four years painting a single farm
field close to where Constable once drew inspiration. His painter's
umbrella became a familiar sight to local people, as he worked at
different times of the year, observing day and night, to produce a
dramatic series of panoramas first shown at The Arts Centre in
Kings' College, Cambridge. He knew he'd got something right when
the porters at the lodge started telling their friends. The show
attracted a wide audience from Cambridge and beyond and people
began to tell him, 'oh, we drove through one of your landscapes
last week' . One couple even spent an afternoon looking for the
field!
Stephen then returned and spent a further three years painting a
single oak tree in the same field, in all seasons. He applied the
same principle - the more you look, the more you see. The tree
changes completely, birds fly by, peope come and go, crops and
hedges are cut. This collection, called "Oak", was shown last
autumn at Vertigo Gallery, in fashionable Shoreditch, London. In
the catalogue to the show philospher and TV presenter Alain de
Botton declared that the paintings had "re-enchanted" nature.
Early this year Stephen launched a series of limited-edition
prints at Art Expo, a major print fair in New York. With the help
of the Governments "Passport to Export" scheme, modern Essex
landscape prints are now reaching a US public. This November the
prints will be given a UK launch at a party on their home ground,
at Reeman's Fine Art auctioneers in Colchester, a stone's throw
from where the original paintings were made.
The prints are on show in the sale room between Saturday 17th
and Wednesday 21st November (for opening times call Reeman's on
01206 754754) The prints are made under Stephen's supervision and,
like the paintings, there is cutting edge digital work going on
behind the scenes. The biggest are Durst lambda prints -
wonderfully accurate laser exposures on archive photographic paper.
For special commisions and public spaces they can be made up to ten
feet long. At the same time there are small prints: including a
series of 20 oak trees each measuring 7in x 5in that show the same
tree, differently every time.
Stephen says " No matter how much passion you have for your art
being a sucessful artist is not that different from running any
small buiness. In spite of specialist training and time at
unversity I feel I have something in common with decorators and
carpenters. After all, a picture is something you put on the wall
of your home. In my case it's a bit of nature in the living room or
office that reminds you to look twice at the world. The fact that
people put pictures in such places proves they are valued, and I
hope that by selling prints more people will be able to see what I
do."
Striking
Contemporary English Landscapes Captured in High-Quality
Prints
A view of modern London familiar to many American filmgoers is
included in a series of high-impact prints to be launched in the US
by a successful British landscape artist with a passion for the
visual richness of nature.
Stephen Taylor combines traditional oil painting techniques with
digital photo analysis to create contemporary pieces of striking
clarity and beauty. Many of his paintings are in private and
corporate collections in Britain and around the world. Taylor's
first collection of signed limited-edition prints, produced under
his own supervision, goes on show at Art Expo New York from 1 to 5
March.
London from Primrose Hill - a view that has inspired artists and
poets, and was the backdrop for the opening shots of the hit film
"Bridget Jones: the edge of reason " - is a giclée print measuring
3ft 3in x 2ft 7in and limited to 145 copies. It shows the
buildings, cranes, and spires of modern London beyond a swathe of
green parkland with changing layers of cloud overhead.
"Working outdoors saturates you with place and makes you alive
to what you do and don't usually notice. Photographic colour is
generally a poor equivalent for how we perceive colour," says the
artist who spent four years working in a field in the east of
England, close to where Constable painted, to produce a dramatic
series of day and night panoramas he describes as "a revelation of
place". The original paintings were first shown in 2002 at King's
College, Cambridge.
In Spring West Bergholt, a 6ft x 3ft Durst Lambda * print,
limited to 95 copies, a tractor sprays winter wheat as the farm
manager walks the tramlines and planes overhead approach London. A
4ft x 3ft print, in a run of 145, shows a full moon rising over the
darkened field at midsummer, with orange light visible from a town
over the horizon.
Taylor's latest work focuses on a single oak tree in the same
field, observed and painted over a three-year period while seasons
change and planes, wildlife, crops, and people, come and go. The
collection was unveiled in 2007 at Vertigo Gallery in fashionable
Shoreditch, London, and is now reproduced in a series of six
1ft-square giclée images and a further series of 20 giclées, each
measuring 7in x 5in. Both series are limited to 195 copies.
Taylor, a visiting lecturer at the world-renowned Inchbald
School of Design in London, expects his prints to be of special
interest to interior designers and hotel decorators.
Copies of all prints can be viewed at www.stephentaylorprints.com.
The highest quality has been secured by using source images
prepared by elite fine art photographers Prudence Cuming
Associates, together with advanced Lambda laser print technology
and giclée printing. For more on the artist, visit www.stephentaylorpaintings.com
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