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Selection from the Exhibition Harvey
Taylor
Harvey’s aim is to create sensual, evocative work that is both abstract and expressive. The paintings symbolize through their use of twisting organic shapes the idea of transformation and birth. By taking natural forms such as dead twigs, leaves, fossils and conkers, his work seeks to reinterpret and revitalize these objects through the sensitive exploration of shape, colour and texture. The latest paintings are based on a simple curling form but this has been transformed into surreal and ambiguous tunnels that pull the viewer hypnotically into the painting. They are very tenderly painted and felt, the paint is continually stroked and teased and colour is used tonally to create the illusion of depth. At times Harvey claims to feel like a sculptor carving into stone, finding the essential form. Lines give birth to shape and then forms, whilst colour is allowed to come through layers, flickering and shifting from light to dark, creating a rich surface. The colour does at times suggest the human forma and the painted surface could be read as a metaphor for the human skin. Painting
is a physical, intellectual and emotional activity.
Harvey engages fully with the canvas and utilizes his entire body
through the use of seeping, expressive marks that capture movement and raw
creative energy. Whilst painting
he continually rotates the work, looking for new possibilities and criticising
the composition and balance. One
painting will give him an idea for the next, and he often moves from one work
in progress to another and back again. He
tends to work in a series, exploring variations on a theme.
At the moment, he is painting using rollers and brushes and enjoying
exploring the possible shapes that can be suggested by a roller and how these
marks can be teased, pushed and blended with varnish brushes.
The canvases are about the seductive qualities of paint as well as
formalist issues such as colour, composition and texture. Recent
exhibition: 2000
East Anglian Art Marketing 2000
Inkpen Downie Gallery, North
Hill, Colchester Click thumbnail to enlarge view |
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