Henry Taylor

January 2016

We are delighted to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of widely celebrated American artist Henry Taylor, who has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS:1 and the Studio Museum in Harlem 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.’

Taylor’s 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.