FAMILY 2001
As many of Taylor's private collectors testify, they find in his abstract artworks the space to contemplate and delve into their own thoughts (see the testimonials in the "exhibitions" section of this website).
The FAMILY series made me think of a British rebel poet, a man who rose from an impoverished background to adopt a great uncle's title and become an English Lord.
George Gordon Byron's rebellious sexuality,
his unconventional family life and passionate following of his desires
led him to be an outsider in English society at the turn of the 19th
century. In 1816 he left London to become an exile in Geneva.
Lord Byron used his new home as a muse, with
his third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage being an ode
to his sentiments about his own family and the beautiful Lac Leman which
inspired him to complete this poem in Switzerland.
The final stanza of the third canto of Childe
Harold explains the poet's contemplation of family ties, while at the
same time putting them on the plane of true love and his own undying
passion for romance which motivated him to create these exalted lyrics.
The child of love, though born in bitterness,
And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire
These were the elements, and thine no less.
As yet such are around thee; but thy fire
Shall be more tempered, and thy hope far higher.
Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea,
And from the mountains where I now respire,
Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,
As, with a sigh, I deem thou mightst have been to me!
