Before Night

Murray Taylor

 With a degree in painting, and a minor in philosophy, I knew I was going to need to do something to bring in money as I worked on my paintings. Computers were just starting to be used to create renderings of 3D geometry.   I took a job with a company that wanted to use computers to create interesting images, but didn’t know where to start, and I taught myself.  That led to jobs making images for magazines, television and computer games.  During the day I was making these photorealistic, hard edge computer renderings and at night I’d be in my studio fascinated with making more expressive marks, and exploring the qualities of the paint – pretty much exactly what the computer cannot do.  For a while the two felt very separate, but more and more my painting was being informed by what I was learning about at work – particularly the physics of light and color, caustics and sub-surface scatter.  Even though my work can be semi-abstract, and is never something completely realistic, knowing how light and optics work together in the physical world plays a big part in the thinking that goes on while I am painting.

This current series of paintings are dominated by sky. Many have oceans, some have landscapes, others are just clouds. Looking up at the sky has always been associated with deep meditative thought, prayer and wonder.  It seems to be we have in common, like a Jungian archetype.  So I’m taking memories of imagery that is already thought evoking and using layers of paint to allow the viewer to get lost in the painting. The idea is to nudge the viewer into their own thoughts and meditation.  Sometimes I’m bringing order out of chaos, other times I’m letting the chaos have its moment of beauty - always allowing space for something mystical to shine through. My technique is always evolving as I continue this lifelong exploration of paint and image.

-MT

" Taylor has these picturesque, large-scale clouds. The light is amazing " 
- Baltimore Magazine, March 2014

"Murray Taylor's are the kind of paintings that draw you in because they invite you to imagine the process of painting"
- SoBo Voice, April 2013

"We love the way Murray Taylor captures natural light." - Saatchi Art, January 2013