Rod Taylor

Rod Taylor, AM is a painter based in Adelaide.

Rod Taylor b.1944, is a retired Associate Professor of Flinders University and retired CEO Adelaide Central School of Art Incorporated, which he co-founded with his then wife, Heather Nicholson in 1982.

He studied art in SA at the South Australian School of Art and in London at St Martins School of Art.

In 1998 he was awarded a fellowship of the Council of University Art & Design Schools (ACUADS), and in 2010, he received the award of Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

He has work in both private and public collections. In 2008 Central Gallery held a survey of his paintings and drawings from 1980 to 2008.

Artist Statement

My work usually starts with an idea as either an arrangement of forms - almost invariably involving a figure, or figures - or a narrative suggested by an arrangement of figures in the act of something and sometimes a few salient objects. When there is a “story” it never has a definite meaning. In fact, as long as it has some level of interest for me - without a definite understanding - its meaning in a literary/verbal sense is almost of no concern. The real meaning or intent of the work is almost always the communication of a sense of “otherness”; a sense of something beyond our ordinary awareness that moves us in some way.

When this is achieved it is through the process of actually making the work - that is, though the technical and aesthetic construction of the work. Most obviously it is marked by a “stillness” which, interestingly, given the essentially subjective nature of it all, seems to be commonly observable.The works are about the mystery of things, expressed through craft and the play of formal properties such as space, shape and colour. I am aware of the objective, figurative nature of my inventions, but I don’t think much about their symbolic, literal or verbal meaning. I choose what to make unconsciously and am guided to manipulate them into a satisfying final state intuitively.
 

Rod Taylor AM
2016

Solo Exhibitions

2016

"New Works" , Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide

2012
"New Works" , Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide