Demo Pop Art Diaries 7 A Retrospective Part 2

Loz Taylor From the Sporting Life to the Good Life!

At the end of part one we saw Loz Taylor leave school, go to college and look around him for work that could sustain him in body and spirit. During one of his regular visits to what people of a certain age still call the “Labour Exchange” Taylor was offered the chance of an extra £10 per week if he were to do some form of work experience, pretty much of his choosing. So he informed the member of staff that he had always had an ambition to become a cartoonist and she acquiesced. So for a while Taylor became a cartoonist and indeed had several of his cartoons published in a very popular local paper called the Black Country Bugle under the pseudonym of Laurie.

Taylor’s college years were full of new and enlightening experiences, as he immersed himself in all things artistic, including graphic design, photography and working from life models. Of all the unclothed women he drew during that period, he particularly remembers an older lady called Viv, whose husband thoughtfully used to bring a heater into the studio to keep her warm. Perhaps this was an early sign of how important even then, the reality behind the art was to Taylor. 

One of Taylor’s earliest life drawings.

 

Taylor also experimented in graphic design, where he touched on advertising and also screen printing.  Taylor shows me an early collage work where he was asked to take a letter from the alphabet and “morph” it into something else entirely. He chose the letter ‘W’ and transformed it into a flame and match design. Taylor also created a work at this time that he called the ‘Three Fools’ in which he depicts three “Foolish” self characteristics i.e. the gambler, the drinker and the artist dreamer, with his head in the clouds. He made three planning stage drawings and then decided to finish the work in one of his favoured methods of the time - collage.

“Three Fools”

  
Taylor also tried his hand at self portraiture in a “graphic” style whilst at college.

The “career” as a cartoonist did not turn into a lasting one, but it did give him a fair amount of free time during that year to indulge himself in one of his great loves – horse racing.

He was though, still in turmoil as to which track his life would go down. Was it to be racing or art? He wanted desperately to do both but could see no future in either. So worked up did he get over this that on at least three occasions he ritually burned all the copies of the Sporting Life he had accumulated up to that time. It is certainly true to say that this quandary was a powerful “de- railing” factor in the young man’s life.  

Guilt is an extremely powerful emotion, especially for the young and impressionable, and can be felt for many reasons. One of the most emotive is when we feel we are not meeting the standards and criteria set for us by society.  A young Taylor felt that pursuing a form of gambling as a career was taboo, and that talking of becoming an artist would be dismissed as fanciful. It seems odd now that racing (and poker) enjoy a “sexy” more positive image, when back then, a young man, standing at a bus stop with a copy of the Sporting Life under his arm, would have been looked down upon and dismissed as work shy.

It almost goes without saying though that Taylor wore his badge of shame (The Sporting Life) with pride, although inwardly it also brought him a considerable amount of stress and anxiety. Indeed it is true to say that in these early days of his fascination with betting, racetracks and fast moving quadrupeds, even his new found partner Deb had her concerns.  However when she saw the strength and extent of his intent, and the deliberate and calculated form it took, she came to understand and accept it. 

The next step in Taylor’s merry- go- round post school existence was to take a Kalamazoo computing course. He knew from the off that he would never make a computer programmer, even though part of him realized that it was where the immediate future lay. What he did do however quite typically was make the racing obsession “fit” into what he was being trained to do at the time, inventing a racing game program using Cobalt that was a great hit with his colleagues. Taylor soon moved on though, little realizing what a great friend the computer, and in particular the internet, would be to him in the not too distant future.

Whilst still on the computer course Taylor managed to get a “proper” job as a circulation assistant with a local newspaper the Express and Star.  In Taylor’s own words he was a glorified paper boy, collecting the accounts from newsagents and delivering the papers for them to sell on.  The boss of the Express and Star loved horse racing, and the pair soon struck up a friendship, sadly however the friendship did not have sufficient substance to allow his boss to let Taylor “shadow” the papers racing correspondent!

Without the additional excitement that working closely with the sporting pages of the paper would have brought, Taylor found the job in his own words “a complete drudge”. Still it took the powers that be there, two years to discover that he was not a team player, and had no enthusiasm for the cause of paper delivery and account collection. So they demoted him to….just delivering papers! It is no surprise to report that Taylor took little time in leaving. Finding himself needing work again, to pay the bills on the flat he and Deb were renting, he decided to go self employed – as a window cleaner. 

Taylor: “It’s what the West Brom striker Jeff Astle did when he left football. And if it was good enough for that great man, then it was certainly good enough for me.”

Taylor was now in a kind of limbo, waiting for an opportunity to fulfil his artistic potential. Constantly processing images and ideas in his head, and storing them away for later use. This was to lead him, as I have mentioned before, to call his art business “Stored Images”. It was approximately 1993 now and halfway through his time cleaning windows.
Then, one day, Taylor bought and read the very first edition of a magazine called .NET.  He read the magazine from cover to cover, turned to his partner, Deb, and said, “This is the future!” She read the magazine too, and was soon in total agreement.

Taylor’s “Sacred” Coat of Arms and Raison D’Etre

In the early 1990’s e-mail was what a Yorkshire man received through his letterbox in the morning, with the world wide web more closely resembling two children with a piece of string and two baked bean tins! An exasperated Taylor would talk to friends in the pub about the possibilities f the internet to almost universal blank stares. However he found a kindred spirit at home in his partner, Deb, and they bought their first modem and acquired an e mail address, and Taylor soon found his way onto an early racing forum.

At about this time, Taylor wrote two books on ‘pedigree handicapping’ at the request of an editor of Raceform Update, for whom he was writing a weekly column. Taylor was also producing “speed ratings” for sale via the internet, which he could send out all over the world with very little cost and no boundaries.
It seemed that the computer and the web combined were making his career in racing easier and easier month by month. But frustratingly technology had still not caught up with Taylor’s artistic ideas, with the available print technology still falling far below the necessary standard required for what Taylor had in mind.

In the year 2000 Taylor got a job working exclusively for an internet racing company called At The Races (ATR.com) and he concentrated all of his efforts on making his new association work and continued to build his career.

In 2006 Taylor bought a small storage space in Dudley from “Storage King” to both store his art works and to create new pieces. He used this space for about eighteen months and then moved to Princess Alley in Wolverhampton, a real step up this, to a real art studio, where he met and socialised with other artists for the very first time. Included in their number was Lloyd Austins, who was later to create the 3D modelling of Taylor’s “Dogs of War”.

Eighteen months after his move to Princess Alley, he was on the move again, but was this time to settle in the studio he inhabits to this day, in Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton.

The Makers Dozen Studio -

Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton 

Now there was no conflict between racing and art. The technology was in place for Taylor to transfer his art from his head to the paper (or canvas) and he had made a success of a career in racing
This was also the time of the “mini big bang”, as Taylor likes to call it, an important moment when ideas about art and chance were allowed to explode, yet collide and interact with each other at will. 

My friend Loz Taylor would tell me, I know, that he is just starting out on the road to real success in “Business Art”, and I would not argue that. However, I think, if nothing else, these diaries are highlighting quite a long road already trod by this erstwhile “paper boy”. But I will leave the last word to a man who made a pretty good living by teaching others how to be successful, Mr Dale Carnegie. When he wrote this, he surely must have had Taylor in mind!

“Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, are the qualities that most frequently make for success.”

Here are some of my personal favourites among Loz Taylor’s work:

Paris Flickers and Young Blades Are Just So Glam

Mann Ray Stops Bullets (Negative) and Crime Scene

                        


 

   

 

Demo Pop Art Diaries 6: a Retrospective Part one

Loz Taylor from the School Book to the Form Book 

“Sit quietly and work from your books”. It was an all too familiar instruction to Loz Taylor’s junior school class as they were left to their own devices once again by a teacher who was determined to spend more time furthering his career in the hope of becoming Deputy Head than staying in the classroom with his charges.

Whereas with most children this lack of educational guardianship and guidance would have been a positive disadvantage, for Taylor it gave him opportunity, he lost himself in the books themselves with their graphic illustrations and the use of  light and shade in their  illustrations. Sometimes the teacher concerned would absent himself all morning or all day so Loz learned to copy and draw from the books, he got so good that on one occasion a fellow pupil accused him of tracing a full page image of a grasshopper, he had not done so but when they placed the drawing over the original it was indeed a perfect fit!

At this time, approx 1970 one of the Black Country’s last bastions, Bilston steel works was still very much in operation  and this was one of the subjects that Taylor and his class were asked to draw but this time as part of their actual education! Taylor’s picture of the steel works was singled out as the best and he was selected to paint a large version of it for display in the corridors of the Manor School in Coseley in the West Midlands. Taylor recalls that the head teacher used to continually check on his progress and was indeed the first person to show an interest in Taylor as an Artist.

There was a considerable genetic president for Taylor to travel the artistic route in life.  His grandfather was a draftsman  and his uncle was a commercial artist working for the Co operative in Walsall, he gave the young Taylor a lot of encouragement and was to some degree a sounding board when he was working at home, questioning and guiding  Taylor with regard to his sketching, which was almost exclusively the medium in which he worked at this time, and giving guidance where he felt it necessary but Taylor was also fast developing his own style… and his own mind.

Although he received no formal training in art his interest in it continued throughout the first two years of High School. Unfortunately Taylor’s luck with teaching staff had followed him and he found himself toiling under the auspices of an art teacher who took a dislike to him right from the off.  Taylor believes that the attitude the teacher displayed towards him was deep routed and lay in Taylor’s humble working class background, he believes the “educator” had low aspirations for him and was uncomfortable when Taylor then surpassed them so easily becoming as Taylor puts it “a better artist than he had a right to be”.

Taylor recalls one incident in particular which highlights the ignorance of his teacher. One day in class he painted what he went on to realize was a surrealist piece however he received only an angry response for his trouble with his mentor treating the picture as if it were a thing of ‘evil’.  His response was so vitriolic that the 13 year old, in a state of confusion, upset and anger stole back into the classroom at break time and tore up his own work.  Taylor believes to this day that he was having the talent beaten out of him and that he, Taylor, was too much for the teachers small town conservative mentality.

Even when he received an A for art at the end of High School the teacher never suggested he go on to attend art college - no one did. These events have I can see stayed in or around Taylor’s consciousness ever since and whilst it is probably over stating the case to  say they haunted him, they have certainly helped shape much of his belief system since. Proudly and defiantly my good friend quotes to me his mantra once again: “I am going to keep on hurting you with one strong idea after another until you believe in me as an ARTIST!

During his teens Taylor’s parents had jobs as Church Caretakers and he discovered in the Church buildings a wealth of large bibles and other religious works inside of which he found religious paintings which he copied with great enthusiasm. This link to the Church and Religious Iconography has featured in some of his later works.

Taylor at this time was a child of approximately 13 years and still knew nothing of famous Artists or their methods.  As we have discussed most of his work had centred around sketching with some early excursions into screen printing (see below) late in school life but Taylor’s “deeper thinking” phase as with many of us was not to kick in until his later teens. When Taylor hit his twenties however he started to go to the Library and read or more accurately ‘devour’ art books. What he discovered in them was I suppose no more or less than … his future.

Early screen print of a horse race from late in Taylor’s school days.  

 

 From Surrealism to Pop Art, Cubism and Picasso to Dada (the anti-bourgeois, anarchistic, anti art movement founded by…..artists) Taylor loved the books he found, they were full of enchanting imagery that challenged his awakening mind.  Vibrant vivid and colourful imagery like Picasso’s Weeping Woman and I Love You With My Ford by James Rosenquist, an artist who came to prominence at approximately the same time as Warhol and Lichtenstein but who in his own words “emerged separately”  onto the pop art scene. 

 As you can see the image is what is known as a three panelled story which is a style Taylor was to use himself later in “It’s Poetry Really”  above  “Origin of Life” and “Chosen”.   

However, perhaps most importantly and influentially, this was the first time Taylor was to see the works of Andy Warhol. This along with all the other influences he was receiving proved to be a tipping point for Taylor and he made the decision that he wanted to be an “Artist proper” not a commercial artist as his uncle had been, but a fully fledged fame and glory Artist!  Only one small problem lay in his path, it was the early 80’s pre digital art and he did not like to paint!  So unable to reconcile the wish to be a serious artist with the reluctance to pick up a paint brush Taylor looked about him for inspiration and unfortunately found it where so many other men in their late teens and early twenties find it, yes at 19 Taylor discovered girls and alcohol and of course gambling. This combination conspired to occupy his life for approximately the next five years, with the alcohol helping to bring him out of himself and suppress his panic attacks.

 During this spell of “debauchery” from the age of 20 to 27 Taylor dreamed of making money from doing what he loved best, either gambling or Art. He did create some work along the way though, most notably the collages “Heaven” and “Portrait of Andy Warhol”. Working in collage gave Taylor the ability to create images with the crisp lines he desired, something he felt he could not achieve with painting or sketching.

“Portrait of Andy Warhol”

During this period of his life he was of course under the usual pressure from his family to get a proper job and a steady girlfriend, in other words the life all our parents have planned for us. However he steadfastly refused to do a job that held no interest for him and so he drifted from one Government “work experience” scheme to another, needing some further more dramatic incentive to jolt him into action.  For some of us, the artistic drifters who leave school not knowing what we want to do for a “proper” job this jolt never comes, but luckily for Taylor it came on 22nd February 1987, lucky for Taylor that is, but less fortunate for one Andrew Warhola jnr who passed away on that very day.

By the time of Warhol’s death Taylor had passed his “O” levels and had started studying life drawing photography and graphic design, and was already it seems inadvertently building the foundations of his later achievements in life and art - areas to be covered in part two of this retrospective.

Approximately ten years ago Taylor saw a small photograph in his local paper of an elderly man carrying a very ordinary painting for display at a very ordinary church fete. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it did give Taylor some degree of satisfaction to recognise the man as his erstwhile art teacher.   

“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future“… JFK


    


    

Demo pop art diaries 5: A Chance to Make Success an Absolute certainty

Warhol said:  “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

Whilst I feel it is incongruous to say that making money of itself could ever be classed as artistic, it stretches no part of our being, challenges nothing and the pursuit of it in contrast to the pursuit of art rarely results in anything of lasting beauty. I can completely see that for Warhol the link must have seemed irresistible and almost impossible to ignore, as after all the end result is not always in the heat of the moment easy to separate from the means of production. Surely, what Warhol was reflecting on was the ultimate  success of a great work ethic. He was revelling in the accomplishments of a man on top of his game both artistically and as a brilliant self styled publicist with remarkable acumen but also the artistic ability to back it up.
   
A briefer than usual meeting with Loz Taylor this week sees us discussing the near and distant future of the Demo Pop Art family of designs.  Taylor is exceptionally up beat today having discovered on line, several American based companies who form an internet collective that will take an idea/design and bid to be the most reasonable company within the collective to put it into production. 

To this end we discuss firstly Taylor’s desire to put into production the “Dogs of war” chess set which he is keen to have manufactured to the very highest quality standard and we talk about various materials that could be used and possible costing, but Taylor quickly diverts the flow of our conversation to a project which concerns his powerful and evocative image “New York City Beat“. The project will see the image printed directly onto fabric that will then be transformed into a floor cushion.  The possibility of using this collective which includes company’s such as Ponoko and 1000K Garages to print his images directly onto various materials is exciting because due to the image being produced digitally it is always available “on demand” and can be reproduced easily at any time and in any quantity without added expense therefore there is no minimum order required. Supply can match demand precisely and the quality can be maintained at optimum levels.

The image itself is like a visual word association answer, if someone said New York to you what would be your instant response? It perfectly personifies what most would answer, American football, the big apple, the statue of liberty, even the centre square is  designed to evoke images of Central Park and at the very heart the letters NYCB New York City Beat.  All these images do indeed appertain to the beating heart of one of the world’s greatest cities, a city that although still young and evolving culturally is still a place to which millions are drawn almost pilgrim like each year because in part of that very youth and vibrancy. I feel and Taylor nods in agreement (no doubt too polite to tell me he has already thought of it) that the image would make a perfect T shirt for New York as an alternative to the current white T which simply expounds I heart NY.  This image has something more to say than just eliciting a pavlovian response, it is something for the New Yorker to wear with pride showing the world what his city is about and for the tourist to display upon an equally inflated chest when returning home.

Riot Riot we want a Riot

Another image that Taylor is keen to progress to production is that of “Positive Race Riot” Keen followers will know that he wishes to create a cylindrical type lamp shade based around the piece.

This work is about to go on display in Chapel Ash, Wolverhampton, as part of an art collective called Junction, where local artists are putting between 1 and 3 works forward to be displayed in restaurants, pubs and shop windows etc, to promote local art. Positive Race Riot has never been displayed before and Taylor is very keen for it to be aired.  He smiles mischievously at me and tells me that a friend of his has recently described PRR as “A three way cross between Stubbs, Warhol and the Whacky Races!, due I suppose to the way the different coloured competitors are bunched up in anticipation at the starting line. We laugh at the impending chaos that this always suggested in one of the very favourite cartoons of our youth.

In DPAD 4 we mentioned that Taylor was “drilling down” into the rich vein of potential that is the greyhound jacket colours. Taylor tells me that he has still not exhausted this potential and to that end he explains a new project.  He is designing a set of poker playing cards, poker suggests to us gambling which as we know is a subject dear to Taylor’s heart and he has once again pulled a great design out of the bag! Far from playing his cards close to his chest, Taylor shows me the design there and then: 

 The rear of the card as we see will be the greyhound jacket colours and will feature the word poker.  The face of the cards will be in four colours; red and black of course but the second black and red suits will be in two other greyhound colours, with possibly the aces depicting greyhound winners on podiums. Taylor sees this item as an important part of the demo pop art family or range and envisages that it will sell for a modest cost for example £10. He feels it vitally important that the cost of the products produced like the art itself should “go across all borders” with playing cards at £10 T shirts at ,say £20 contrasting with the “Dogs of War” chess set at a possible £1,200, thereby producing pieces for everyone and every pocket. All part of the Taylor ethos of supplying affordable quality without aesthetic or artistic compromise.

Taylor Pimps his Ride! Future not shaky for Demo Pop furry dice
Another lower cost “entry level” item Taylor wants to re invent is the humble set of furry car dice! The dice, which feature prominently in the cartoon Taylor commissioned to advertise Demo Pop Art will of course have an appropriate “make over”, with the numbers one to six replacing the dots shown in the cartoon below. 

“Time for some Business Art”
Talking to Taylor today I think that the term that best describes him is a man with the bit between his teeth, he tells me that he believes it is “time for some business art.” Although his images, as we have discussed previously, are all available as LIP’s (limited issue prints) Taylor has come to realise in recent months that many of his designs can be “transposed” onto a variety of 3D objects such as footstools, chess sets, playing cards etc.

Taylor hopes, as do I, that all his efforts will soon bear fruit, and that the Demo Pop Art family will come into its own when he displays them over a 3 day period (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) in early December at Shoreditch Town Hall. The East London Design Show will see Taylor occupying a corner stand, which he has already booked in the hope of impressing buyers of good taste with both his Limited Issue Prints and also examples of his 3D merchandise.

To close today’s piece, I am going to quote Taylor in an effort to underline to all, his strength of belief and self motivation. For in Taylor, no matter the talk of money and success, we have an individual for whom it is truly still ‘all about the art’…

“I am going to keep on hurting you with one strong idea after another until you believe in me as an ARTIST!”…. Loz Taylor.

Chance may impact on Certainty, and Fate may influence Reality, but other things in life aside from his success shall be left to a roll of the dice….. Richard Gibbons.