Painter, sculptor and teacher. Taylor was born in Hamilton, Victoria and moved with his family to South Australia, then Western Australia in 1932. He was a scholarship winner to Perth Modern School where he exhibited an interest in drawing, photography, model making and aviation.
In 1937 he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force undertaking pilot training at Point Cook. He transferred to the Royal Air Force in 1938, was captured in 1940 and spent the rest of the war in Stalag III prisoner of war camp where he met Guy Grey Smith. They both drew in the camp. He was demobilised in Perth in 1946. He returned to England and enrolled in post-war rehabilitation course at Birmingham College of Art.
He returned to Perth with his wife Sheila in 1949 and settled at Bickley, where he held private art classes in landscape painting. He exhibited oils and watercolours in the Art Competition at Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1950. He taught painting and drawing part-time at Perth Technical College part time from 1951 to 1961 and painting, drawing and sculpture part time at the newly formed at Western Australian Institute of Technology 1965 to 1969.
He took many public commissions, including for the Fremantle Port Authority’s new overseas terminal building 1960-62, AMP, St George’s Square and Western Australian Institute of Technology (Curtin University).
He was artist in residence at Western Australian Institute of Technology and visiting lecturer in 1977. He moved to live in Northcliffe in 1967. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1985. In 1986 he received the Inaugural Emeritus Award from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. An excellent monograph by Ted Snell was published in 1995. He died a few days before a solo exhibition in 2001. Snell considered him “one of the major post-war figures in Western Australian art.”
- Writers:
- Dr Dorothy Erickson
- Date written:
- 2010
- Last updated:
- 2023
