Talk:Alasdair Grant Taylor

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Critique

The material in this section needs to be mostly incorporated into the main text. Then these articles can be used as references to verify the information. Tyrenius 16:00, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Critique section moved from article

I've moved the following for discussion here. I don't see how this meets WP:SPAM let along WP:RS --Ronz 20:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The following critiques were included in the brochure for Taylor's 2007 retrospective exhibition.

In 1986, the gallery-owner Andrew Brown wrote:

Alasdair Taylor is a mainstream European artist living in a geographical backwater. William Johnstone (painter) and Joan Eardley are other Scottish examples. A Highlander by birth, he attended Glasgow School of Art where he trained in the Glasgow tradition of bold drawing and painterly technique. But the seminal influence of his early painting was Asger Jorn, a leading member of the COBRA group whom Alasdair encountered in Denmark in 1959. COBRA is particularly relevant to contemporary painting, for though the movement developed in a parallel manner to American Abstract Expressionism, it never espoused the idea of a wholly abstract art. Pictures such as "Hymn in Black and White", painted during his 12 months in Denmark, show that, as early as 1960, Alasdair Taylor had completely assimilated COBRA's innovations.

On his return to Glasgow in 1961, he felt the need to work from models again, and the lovely portrait of "John the Barman" and the "Self-Portrait as a Dustman" employ a delicious, Soutine-like freedom of handling. But the real breakthrough did not come till 1965, when he moved from Glasgow to the isolated Ayrshire village of Portencross. Washed up on the beach there, he found old baker's boards and discarded planks which he cut into panels on which he obsessively painted mystical landscapes and "mood" portraits. The irregular weathered surfaces and the use of collage encouraged him to experiment with a variety of paint materials. These synthesised with the emotions of his subject matter to create pictures of an almost musical sensibility.

In the mid 1970s, he suddenly simplified his technique and freed his inhibitions by making groups of totally abstract canvases, coloured with the ubiquitous spray cans of that period. When he returned to mark-making, paintings like the "Worshippers" series of 1977-78 gained new lightness and freshness.

Alasdair Taylor's newest paintings, such as "Ghosts" and "Secrets", have a vigour and confidence of McTaggart's seascapes, yet are completely contemporary in feel. Looking at these, I realise that nothing gives me greater pleasure and excites my expectations more than to find that this artist's most recent work is his best.

In May 2007, the writer and artist Alasdair Gray wrote:

In a 1986 catalogue, Andrew Brown wrote: "Alasdair Taylor is a mainstream European artist living in a geographical backwater ..." This is the opinion of nearly every artist who knew Alasdair's work, yet no recent histories of Scottish art mention it. This partly because he seldom left the isolated cottage where he worked so industriously, filling outhouses with paintings and sculpture. Friends visited him and, on occasional trips, his enthusiasm turned many strangers into friends. None were art dealers and gallery-managers, so the exhibitions were arranged with folk who had little or no official standing. They were not noticed by critics in national newspapers, so were invisible to administrators and dealers, who thought only artists who were known in London were worthy of attention. Since World War 2, the few Scottish artists to have become well known, first in Scotland, have had incomes from teaching art in schools, so could afford to exhibit annually in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Scotland will be a centre of art - not a backwater - when our art lovers, local arts administrators and critics see what is made here and judge it independently. This exhibition is a sign of a way forward.

I can't see what WP:SPAM has to do with it at all. If the Gray quote can be verified as by him, and to judge from his blog it can, he is certainly an RS, at least for his own opinion. Johnbod 21:33, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed: the above are the few bits that actually have a published source. Copyright and Wikipedia:Don't include copies of primary sources is more the point; they need using as sources, not quoting in full. Gordonofcartoon 09:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lean Tales

Possible source (or at least something to mention): Alasdair Gray's 1985 short story anthology Lean Tales, co-written with James Kelman and Agnes Owen, contains a story called "Portrait of a Painter" - "the story of an artist named Alasdair Taylor who persists in his painting though he remains unrecognized and unrewarded" [1] I don't know how much it's fictionalised: Vineta Colby took it to be a self-portrait of Gray. Gordonofcartoon 09:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Another source. It'll need someone local to find it as the full story isn't archived. "Artist suffers stroke", Ardrossan & Saltcoats Herald, February 23rd 2006. [2] Gordonofcartoon 20:01, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Loop

The Loop, North Ayrshire's Cultural Magazine, 19, Summer 2007. I'd say there's enough there to write a referenced article, and scrap the OR and unsourced embellishments without prejudice (since they can always be added back in if/when corroborated). Gordonofcartoon 13:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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