Scott A.Taylor

I found every passion in the sky – as encompassing and as certain and as fleeting as the intimacy of a night mist.

John Schueler (1916-1992)


The only way that I am able to create the escape that I have been longing for is through the cloud inspired abstract image.

Clouds, those constantly shifting, ephemeral forms that can scream so loud and whisper so soft. Graceful, soft-edged forms that I use to inform my veiled spaces.

Spaces devoid of distance and time
Spaces in which to forget.

Using soft sombre tones I endeavor to imbue my canvasses with undercurrents of subtle force, eroding the hard edge of reality. The creation of my images is an organic journey, each stroke informing and encouraging the next. The final stroke neither planned nor expected. A process as faithful to the transient essence of my muse as possible.

The resulting cloudscapes are sometimes ‘mapped’ with sinuous, contour-like lines. An attempt to understand the forces and movement that drive my work. Others are overlaid with foregrounds of scraped and dragged layers of paint. They are a chaotic contrast that obscures the spaces beneath, yet never quite obliterates them. Is it an obstacle for the traveler? Or maybe something solid to hold onto?

The titles of my paintings are not, strictly speaking, titles. They are a result of my love of the ambiguous sentence and its ability to trigger journeys of the imagination. Maybe the paintings provide the space within which the viewer can follow the imaginative paths the words begin? Maybe they are the image’s anchor in reality? Or maybe they do reflect some aspect of the paintings? It is up to you.

Influences include, Gerhard Richter and his monumental free abstracts, Mark Rothko and the great nothing, Caspar David Friedrich and the god in nature and Jon Schueler and the poetry of sky. They all move me deeply and it is my hope that I can attain at least an echo of the sublime that these artists achieve so gracefully.

Thank you for your curiosity