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October Issue
2009
Artists' Guild
of Spartanburg in Spartanburg, SC, Features Works by Jim Taylor
The Artists' Guild of Spartanburg will present the exhibit, Imagineering, featuring works by Jim Taylor, on view in the Guild Gallery at the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg, SC, on view from Oct. 1 - 29, 2009.
Taylor is a Spartanburg native who has spent his entire life, except for the years that he served in the Navy, living and working in his hometown. The Spartanburg High School graduate utilized his illustrating and cartooning skills while in the service, contributing to Naval publications, and when he returned home went on to focus on painting and drawing at the University of South Carolina Spartanburg (now Upstate).
Taylor began his artistic career by perfecting his drawing skills and producing award winning works using pointillism, a type of painting made famous by George Seurat in the early 1900s. More recently, he has begun to focus on a combination of photographs, drawings and computer graphics.
Many of the photographs that serve as the basis for Taylor's recent works are made in his backyard garden in the Hampton Heights Historic District where he and his wife Kathy have created an oasis in the heart of the city, nurturing trees, shrubs and flowers that entice birds and butterflies into range of the telescope through which he photographs things near and far.
Even night shots of the moon, made using Taylor's telescope, are reinvented within some of his prints. A close-up photograph of a butterfly transforms into an entire pattern of bold black lines and orange patterns. A shot of ice glistening on a tree limb at midnight becomes a black and white composition against a blue moonlit silhouette. He then overlaps, swirls, layers and compacts many images into a final photographic print which he calls 'Imagineering".
"It is often difficult to pinpoint which part of the art work is drawing and what has been manipulated by computer software into a sophisticated, layered, multi-media collage," Taylor says of the process that takes hours of intense concentration but which the artist says allows him an outlet for his creativity. The collage technique results from superimposing one photo or design onto another, then layering, embossing, smudging, filtering, drawing, cropping or distorting the image.
"I think 'Imagineering' is the best creative collection of my work to date, and I hope the public thinks so as well," Taylor says of the process that allows him to take reality and transpose it into "a more unique and defused collection of light, textures and patterns." One work in the exhibit, Wild Horses, embraces a combination of photo images and painting, using Photoshop brushes, to create the layers of the image. The compelling result incorporates an exotic woman, eyes focused on and hands extended to support two horses that seem to be galloping off toward the viewer.
Taylor's work Bench, unites the brilliant hues of fall leaves with the corner of a weathered bench, the rusted iron of the arm of the bench and the vibrant green moss on the slats echoing the varied colors of the leaves scattered on and around the central image.
For further information
check our SC Institutional Gallery listings or contact Laura Pinkley
at 864/764-9568.
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2009 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2009 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.