User:Tagscharacters

For the creative person

This article serves only to illustrate my participation in this mad but wonderful profession over many years of dedicated practice I have learned to share the many aspects of art in general and character art in particular, being true to ourselves and not slaves to trends gives us the ability to still be contemporary, but like the impressionists go against the “norm” as it were. Abstract landscapes seem to be in vogue at the moment and before that abstract shapes and pop art but I doggedly kept painting quirky characters to my detriment financially; still recently they now seem to be gaining some popularity so as I said being true to what you do ultimately shines through your work and is then a recognizable trait that people identify with honesty is a powerful tool and injected into our everyday practices and work will ultimately bring something to us as artists and people, I’ll end these ramblings with an illustration, you start with a blank canvas subconsciously putting bits of yourself into an image, by that I mean it feels right to you, and over time an image appears, you then show/display that image and someone is moved by it, happy ,sad, maybe just pleased, either way a genuine emotion which intern feeds your creative process, and stimulates the viewer, everyone needs encouragement, I get mine through my paintings. I hope this small insight that I share may benefit the viewer to better understand the methods and motives behind my character paintings. You can check out for yourself some examples to illustrate this article at http://tagnews-apaintingadaycrap.blogspot.com/

Steve Taylor also known as tag-is one of Cornwall’s most original and creative naïve painters. Although his work has sometimes been likened to Beryl Cook’s ‘but with attitude’, the comparison is only superficial. Taylor’s characters exist in an altogether harsher world and blend humour with a deeper pathos. In fact, his colourful repertoire of ordinary folk, like ‘Albert’ or ‘Fred’ or ‘the Belles of Camborne’, seem to accept their place in the world with a quiet stoicism. They are wonderful little vignettes of people with enlarged heads, squeezed into their picture frames, engaged in absolutely nothing of importance. Like actors in a Beckett or Pinter play, they live such ordinary lives. There is no stage-acting here though, which is why we can so easily empathise with them - they remind us of our first date perhaps all those years ago, or that ride in a much-loved Morris Minor or that visit to the seaside, when we contentedly watched the world pass by from our deckchairs. There is nothing cosmetic or manicured about these characters: their sagging eyes are lined and their world-weary faces express angst or resignation. These paintings cut through all society’s pretensions and offer the viewer a fly-on-the-wall vision of an earthier world that seems to have been long forgotten or ignored. (JF)