Devon based printmaker, Stewart Taylor, expresses how his art connects to the world around him, and the ways in which we ourselves can find connection to and reflection on our environment through art.

Stewart has exhibited regularly at the Afforable Art Fairs, and has also been selected for the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, as well as appearing in both the RA Summer Show & the National Original Print Show, winning the Great Art Prize at the latter in 2018 for ‘Alcala’. He has been continually interested in the self-inflicted demise Mankind faces within our Anthropocene era, & our behaviour within it. Although the outlook here is perpetually fearful & pessimistic, Stewart tries to create a contrary world of destruction & beauty, where change, metaphysics, erasure, air & light are all of critical importance; but also where the relationships between landscape, living things & humanity are paramount.

I work from photographs that I have taken (usually of Trees!), although I do rely on others to provide me content from places that inspire that I cannot travel to. there has to be a tangible essence of place to these that can move me on to printmaking – that has been the case for 30 years, whether I’ve used reprographic processes, or monoprint now. I’ve also invariably taken a multi-layered approach to my imagery, which I love about print. As for knowing when something is finished…I’ve never found that hard to know, luckily!

My prints very much look to describe the wonder of what we have around us, and that it should be looked after an awful lot more than we are doing at present. But very much from the perspective of a flaneur – being preachy doesn’t work! A lot of my trees appear quite anthropomorphic. And that’s right. We need to recognise a little more that we’re not so different.

This quote appears on my website, and it just rings so true;

“No one sees trees. We see fruit, we see nuts, we see wood, we see shade. We see ornaments or pretty fall foliage.
Obstacles blocking the road or wrecking the ski slope. Dark, threatening places that must be cleared.
We see branches about to crush our roof. We see a cash crop. But trees—trees are invisible ”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory (p. 423).

Most recently – I’d say the aforementioned charity fundraisers and the Jyväskylä Art Museum acquisition of my work. Also being a key component in the studio build that helped East London Printmakers move from London Fields to Mile End in 2016 – I was working full-time in the City simultaneously, so it meant 3 months plus of 70-hour working weeks! seriously, I got a huge sense of satisfaction from this. ELP and the people there are very dear to me, so it was one of my better deeds.