Henry Taylor
— The Arts Club, London 18 January — 13 April 2016

Widely celebrated American artist Henry Taylor has had solo shows at MoMA PS:1 and the Studio Museum in New York in recent years. Based in Los Angeles, Taylor has seen international acclaim for his startlingly expressive portraits, in which he uses bold, blocked colour, thick brushwork and a flattened picture plane to striking effect. Many of the paintings included in The Arts Club exhibition are from the artist’s month-long stay in London in 2015. 

Taylor’s practice is situated within the intersecting histories of social realism, folk and outsider art and his vibrant portraits are usually painted very quickly from life, over only one sitting. He incorporates a broad range of subjects in his work, rapidly capturing close friends and family members as well as ‘outsiders’ such as homeless people or the mental health patients he worked with as a psychiatric nurse for almost a decade. As the artist explains, quite simply: ‘I paint those subjects I have love and sympathy for.’

The portraits across Taylor’s oeuvre range in character, from celebratory and jubilant to unflinchingly political. In recent years, Taylor has focused his works on individuals significant to the African American community, commemorating sports heroes, civil rights leaders and those martyred by gun violence and police brutality. Some portraits are composed in ways that highlight the injustice and inequality of economic and racial disparities in the United States, as the artist describes: ‘What role does politics play in my work? …This is America and if you’re black in America it’s easy for politics to permeate your work.’ 

His colourful, characterful portraits have been praised for the infectious, vibrant energy and liveliness of the sitters, qualities which are emphasised when seen together in the close salon hang of the exhibition at The Arts Club.

Henry Taylor was born in 1958 in Oxnard, California and lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Henry Taylor studied painting at California Institute of the Arts. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include at MoMA PS1, New York (2012), the Studio Museum, New York (2007) and the Santa Monica Museum, California (2008). His work is exhibited by Carlos/Ishikawa, London, and Blum & Poe Gallery, Los Angeles and New York.

The exhibition is curated by Pernilla Holmes and Amelie von Wedel from Wedel Art.