Stephen Taylor Paintings

introduction to an article Q how long can / should these be?

Landscape painting may look like a dying art, but experience tells me this is wrong. Not only do children draw and paint what's around them, amateur painting flourishes and there is an international market for landscape in the private sector.

Most of this activity is not described as public art, but I think that paintings of place used in the private sphere have a continuing role in the construction of meaningful places in the public realm.

In an Urban World contact with Nature is more and more important. But what do we see in the natural world? What do we see when we look at an oak tree ?What on Earth is there ?

When I was seventeen something unusual happened to me.

I was watching a film about the civil war in a local cinema. There was a cavalry charge, and as a horse leapt a wall of pikes something snapped inside me. I walked out of the cinema and towards the countryside. In half an hour I was pacing down a lane, walking towards the afternoon sun, not knowing what was happening. I felt I didn't know where I was but I had a purpose I couldn't express. I was tense, crying, and although I couldn't stop walking I felt my body begin to lock up.