The Mountain Within

The Mountain Within marks a new direction in Taylor’s ongoing exploration of landscape. Immersion in the world of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints with their muted palettes, segmented compositions, sharp angles, and flowing contours prompted a shift toward simplified and more deliberately structured forms. Placing one shape beside another introduced new clarity to the shifting terrain of the paintings.

In these landscapes, abstracted elements of nature and figure subtly converge. Structures or presences appear as embedded in the cadence of the arrangement where instinctive gesture has created both a nuanced imprint and a concrete form. Paint itself has moved into the role of subject. Applied in sculpted impasto masses, each mark exists as a distinct physical entity. Surfaces are built as much as painted, pushing into the viewing space. What might first appear maximal is in fact a search for reduction — a pursuit of essential form through material directness.

These works acknowledge the transitory nature of the places we inhabit; uncertain terrain shaped by upheaval, adaptation, and persistence. Gradually the mountain reveals itself as an internal and external force: a formation of ascent, pressure, and passage. Here, landscape becomes a reclaimed ground in the shifting worlds that we walk upon, and that live within.