Matilda Taylor

Statement

There is a harmony between occupying streets with handcrafted placards and the production and installation of art in public space.

I am interested in the social history of the landscape. Inspired by the complexities of space and place, there is a strong pyschogeographical origin to my work. My work particularly draws from the idea of the commons. Although this topic has evolved from open pastures and fences, as the physical manifestation of feudal land law, to the realm of the cultural and digital, my work and research lingers on its spatialities.

I celebrate the painterly with rough brush strokes, watery washes of paint, and unfinished areas exposing drawn elements and the raw canvas. Building up thin layers of oil paint as forms jostle for the foreground, I apply a painterly handling of the figure in the same manner of natural forms. I am drawn to a vivid colour palette that equips forms with a whimsical escapism.

My subject matter is derived from a wide array of sources, but most recently: archival imagery of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, with an aim to elevate traditionally overlooked subjects – women resisting, working class struggle – to the status of a ‘history’ painting. The fascination with images of collective dissent stems from both its cornucopia of visual material, where protest tactics are so often craft-based, and its urgent relevance today where the right to protest is subject to a careful dismantling. Through assembly, bodily forms morph into the ground and transform the perspective of place, a painterly musing on site specificity. 

Traits of still-life are taken from what I see as curiosities in the landscape: a sapling shelter in the woods, a seat cushion discarded on the pavement, or a fence built from unrefined tree branches - each some form of human intervention. My paintings suggest that figures are a vital presence and structure within the landscape.