Portraits by Harvey Taylor: A Review

The exhibition was a year in the making, and the portraits required four years of work; this is most certainly a collection of labour and love. However, the time period seems to be more reflective of the artist’s feelings than the individual work.

Harvey Taylor’s collection is made up of oil portraits of his family “tributes to those closest to him”. This Colchester based artist is part of a group called Contemporary British Painting. “The intention was to capture a moment in time through a long labour intensive way of working.”  The moment might have been captured, but whether it should have been is another question. The portraits seem to lack something, remaining flat. By focusing of the face the viewer becomes concerned with the subjects expression, but these are limited to the movement of the eyes looking up, down or sidewards (fascinating). This detached style made me wonder what Taylor’s intention was. These are personal painting to him and yet there is little affection indicated in the sterile format of working at parts of the images. The most potent portrait for me was ‘Phoebe sleeping’, in the corridor away from the main exhibition, which reflected the vulnerability of the child. The concept of this collection could be construed as delightfully simple and with this criterion it was extremely pleasant and realistic, but the continual mention of abstraction limited the exhibition on the whole.
The curator described the exhibition as drawing together a group of large scale portraits; however the use of space did not reflect this, as the portraits felt separated and singular rather than complimenting one another. The only bond between the works was portrayed by the two adjoining portraits of Phoebe. These interacted with one another, as the each subject shared a furtive glance with her painted self.

Taylor spoke at the exhibition opening, but seemed unsure of what his collection aim was, claiming that the price was speculative and that: “I don’t expect people to buy them”. The artist himself realising that the collection is far more about the tolls of his labour and exertion than an exhibition of fine art. This insistent was disconcerting, the audience obviously wasn’t going to be emotionally attached to these images, and Taylor himself saw them not as a whole image rather the culmination of parts, so what is their real purpose?

Before I attended the opening, I read his press release which evoked far more meaning to the portraits and his work: “The intention was to capture a moment in time through a long labour intensive way of working. I was initially inspired by the work of Malcolm Morley and Gerhard Richter. Morley developed a technique where he surgically analyzed a photograph or image and painted only a small part of the image at a time.” The method of his project is endearing, but the finished collection did not allow the viewers to share this feeling.

Taylor seemed very much preoccupied by his ‘abstract’ technique “working on them upside down, sideways”, so as to “dissect the photograph creating a more complex image. The result is a photorealistic painting where abstract qualities are present.” Forgive my scepticism but isn’t that the only way to draw and a paint from a digital photograph, nothing abstract or intangible about it. It came over that this was more important than the subject matter (his close family). The repetition of ‘abstract’ seemed to be his attempt to infer that he had done more than take a photograph and then paint what he had right in front of him. The oil work was flawless and the paintings lifelike, but they lacked animation and feeling. It is condemnable that he obviously wanted to spend time and effort on this collection, but when he is using it to add depth to what is essentially a group of family pictures, one is left a little deflated. The method of the portrait was alluring but when the ‘story’ isn’t reflected in the work how enticed or enchanted can the looker be?

If they could have been viewed as a family set I believe the impact would have been far greater, speaking to one of the exhibition helpers, she claimed that the portraits looked better at a distance when people were not there to get in the way. When she first saw the collection she was overwhelmed by the scale and then the detail grabbed her, unlike other exhibitions that the gallery has held.

The Powerpoint show in the corner must be mentioned, initially I thought it was a method to involve the York students and create an element of familiarity to the audience that the artist clearly had to his collection. On second glance I realised these digital images were portraying smiling posing individuals; the polar opposite to Taylor’s collection, very commercial (not abstract at all). Unfortunately, there was not method in the madness. Quintessentially they were family portraits with a fat price tag for abstraction. “Please have some more wine” best thing I heard all evening.