by Richard Taylor

EXHIBIT STATEMENT

Art is imitation whether it is derived from nature or the minds of individual artists as they interpret it. This idea dates back at least to the Greeks. We learn by imitating models. We take things in through the senses and translate into form, whether it is a snowy field at dusk or a semblance of Van Gogh’s sketch of a potato digger. Too often, much of the world as we choose to experience it simply becomes furniture—habitual forms we must navigate our way through or around. We tend to ignore or take for granted what is not immediately in our path.

What drawing means to me is an exercise in giving attention to things and learning to see. The subjects range from the terrain of the human form, the light and seemingly random shadow in a landscape, to the sculptural lines of the human face in portraiture. Art, as my favorite literature professor Guy Davenport used to say, is “the replacement of indifference by attention”. To me, that means focusing, concentrating on things and using ink and watercolor to arrest light in a moment of time and giving it permanency of a kind. Some of that seeing involves remembering the masters of seeing - Edgar Degas, Michelangelo, Kathe Kollwitz, Albercht Durer, Berthe Morisot and hundreds of others who find new ways to communicate the world they see.

I draw and paint every day in the journal I’ve kept since 1984, often inspired by the renderings of other artists or my direct perceptions of people and places, many of them in Frankfort and the Elkhorn Valley. Using watercolors and homemade Walnut Ink, I usually start the day by sketching and painting several images to keep up with the entries in my journal, a daily account of what happens around me. I complete one journal about every month. I am now up to volume 286. Both drawing and journaling are, finally, a way to memorialize experience.

I am grateful to Yes Arts for the opportunity to share a bit of my experience living in the Central Bluegrass. I am especially grateful to photographer Gene Burch for his skills and good sense in making this project come to fruition. He is one of our community’s treasures, as many of us know.

ARTIST BIO