ross taylor

Ross Taylor graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 2008 and in 2016 was awarded the Abbey Scholarship in painting at the prestigious British School at Rome, Italy. Taylor’s rich and varied visual vocabulary imbues his paintings with the allusion to another space, shifting illusively between known and unknowns, dreams and reality, abstract forms and flickers of recognisable beings. The painted surface is used as a platform on which the artist’s in-built ‘fictions’ and new myths intermingle, morph, and collide. By scraping, scratching, staining, cutting and collaging, Taylor cultivates an almost obsessive layering of trace and mark with each painting proudly displaying the scars of their own making. Each surface develops over many months of working and re-working. Canvas and paper are examined, folded and stored in the studio, sometimes for many months or years, allowing crinkles and creases to develop, etching a history and life into the fabric of the work before a mark is even laid down. Taylor’s process of gradual layering of mark and colour display a concern with a language that is non-specific, a kind of poetry where only condensations appear on the surface, attempting to model thoughts and ideas that seem to be impossible in a physical realm. Small gestures gradually evolve into larger ones and are repeatedly beaten back until an indexical and non-descriptive logic begins to take over. One painting’s pigment is scraped and applied to another, creating a cannibalistic painting process where every painting that Taylor makes, either past, present or future, is immediately connected to another, with the meaning of each only becoming clear when passing within view of the rest.

Ross Taylor (b. 1982 Harrow, UK) lives and works in London. Taylor completed his MFA Painting at the Royal College of Art, London, UK (2008) and was the Abbey Scholar in Painting at the British School at Rome, Italy (2015-16). Selected recent exhibitions include Ross Taylor: Time of the Season, BEERS London, UK (2022); The Studio at 4am, Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, UK (2020); The decorator always gets paid least, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest, Romania (2020); Independant, New York, USA (2020); A Spicy Migraine Grease, Christian Larsen, Stockholm, Sweden (2018); As I took her arm she stared through my face at the dark branches of trees over my head, Yellow, Varese, Italy (2018); A Motley Crew, Christian Larsen, Stockholm, Sweden (2017); Teeth Where Fingernails Should Be, Ivan gallery, Bucharest, Romania (2017); Outpost, Caves, Melbourne, Australia (2017); Residence in Nature, Konsthall Växjö, Smaland, Sweden (2016); June Mostra, The British School at Rome, Italy (2016);  A Bestiary, Turf, London, UK (2016); An evening with Flat i, Flat i Publishing, London (2015); Structural Object, 27, London (2015); Mudlark, FOLD Gallery, London, UK (2013); School Play, Kingsgate Gallery, London, UK (2013); Backwards Man, CGP, London, UK (2012); How Could Everybody be so Wrong, ANDOR/David Roberts Foundation, London, UK (2011); Bunker Bar Christening, ANDOR, London (2011); Haze Moods, Supplement, London (2009). In 2014, along with his brother, Taylor co-founded Mrs. Paterson’s Press, a publishing house for artist’s preoccupied with historical ideas surrounding the portrayal of thought and consciousness through visual means. He is also co-editor of Neru Phuyt magazine and has written for several publications such as Royale F!%ks and Control Magazine.

“I am trying to create an atmosphere in my work…and specifically about the ‘weather’ in new paintings. Within the surface, there is always an allusion to another space, I want them to act as a rendering of an emotional place…The speed, or should I say, slowness of the surface demands attention.”

Shoulder pipe forgiveness claw, 2021

A MOTLEY CREW (GROUP SHOW), 2017

A SPICY MIGRAINE GREASE, 2018