KATHERINE TAYLOR
Katherine Taylor
Katherine Taylor is a Central Oregon oil painter who creates images saturated with visual metaphors and symbology. Her signature style includes jewel colors, strong tonality, and a range of brushwork and knife application that creates lively, textured surfaces. Dreamy, mysterious settings showcase Taylor’s figurative images. The same attention to mood and lighting can be seen in her landscapes, still life, and portraiture.
What began as a classical Old Masters art training early in her career eventually led Taylor to experiment with Baroque Realism, Classical Naturalism, and Russian Impressionistic art methods. The result has made her style unique, oftentimes described by others as “soulful and luminous.”
From the Artist:
“I was very enamored of Caravaggio when I visited Italy a few times to study there, and I have never totally shed my preference for chiaroscuro (strong contrasting lights and darks) that his work exemplified. I know it’s almost a cliché to hear artists say they are painting the light, but it’s true, that’s what I feel I am trying to capture, a sense of brilliant luminosity coming out of darker places. That contrast is very satisfying to me and it appeals to my alter ego which loves all things gothic and dramatic.
My artwork is now changing to reflect a new understanding of what brushwork and palette knife textures can do. I still love painting still life and the figure, in addition to landscapes and portraiture. But how I paint everything is now morphing because the older I get, the more I have new things to say. My current world view includes a quantum influence: I attempt to paint that brief moment when you can almost anticipate a thing or a person before it comes fully into view. It’s a magical precipice and we’re all experiencing it on some level, conscious or otherwise; it’s just hard to talk about. My challenge is to paint it instead, and I attempt it by inventing a bit of abstraction to add another dimension to ‘reality.’ Inventing can be a little scary for a classically-trained representational artist like myself, but it’s what keeps life interesting for me at the moment.”
Taylor’s paintings have been included in juried exhibitions and private collections in the United States and Europe. She has exhibited in world-class galleries and continues to teach and lecture on art.