Andy Taylor: Open to the Unexpected is a solo exhibition featuring water-themed regional landscapes in the colorful, gestural style of local artist, Andy Taylor. On view at Ann Korologos Gallery from June 26 to July 20, 2019. Join artist Andy Taylor for a reception Thursday, July 11th from 5 to 7PM at Ann Korologos Gallery in historic downtown Basalt.

“Drawings often yield as many questions as answers. On one hand, they serve as visual reminders of the scene: little bits of line, hints of color, suggestions of light. On the other hand, drawings are incomplete, which is good. That incompleteness encourages me to recall what I thought was significant about the scene; it permits me to invent significance, and it gives me the freedom of discovery as I paint. Often, I’ll be taken by a roadside scene, something I see on the way to a destination. I might set out for Moab or Bluff with a purpose or place in mind, and the drawings along the way frequently become paintings.”  -Andy Taylor

For more than forty years, Taylor has been drawing and painting scenery within a day’s drive of his studio in Carbondale, Colorado. As an avid rafter, Andy is inspired by the colors, shapes, weather and places where water changes the landscape. His loyal collectors enjoy hanging the easily identifiable landmarks found across the Colorado Plateau, with its spectacular canyons, high plains, distant mesas, winding rivers, sparse trees and sundry vegetation. The artist often revisits the same areas to paint, knowing the landscape has changed both in form and through his perception.  

“When you look at Andy’s work, the common theme is water, but through the perspective of erosion, time and river ecosystems,” shares gallery manager, Caroline Iles. “He examines the contrast of water and desert, from canyons carved by rivers to groves of cottonwood trees and spring flowers, to dried riverbeds and mountain peaks carved by snowmelt.”

Taylor starts his process with pen and ink sketches with marginalia, a process he considers to be the bones of a painting and a form of meditation. His sketches are visual reminders of a scene, but are always left incomplete, leaving room within the process to “invent significance and freedom to make discoveries” as he paints. Familiar landscapes painted in Taylor’s gestural, expressionistic style convey the mood of the artist, seen through his characteristic brushwork and palette. The subjective reactions to reality in the form of shape and color are a signature of Taylor’s work.

Andy’s work has been shown at numerous Western museums, including the Denver Art Museum, the Aspen Art Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum. A veteran of many one-man and group shows since the 1970s, Taylor became a Club Artist at the prestigious Coors Western Art Show’s new Gallery at the National Western Club in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

Works by Andy Taylor will be complemented by an array of other contemporary Western artists represented by Ann Korologos Gallery, the premier showcase for Western contemporary art in the Roaring Fork Valley. Andy Taylor: Open to the Unexpected will remain on view through July 20, 2019. For more information, please visit the gallery at 211 Midland Ave in Basalt, call 970-927-9668, or inquire online at art@korologosgallery.com.