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
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