Artist's Statement

Once long ago, after drawing in the margins of my textbooks during most of my middle school years, I was sent to an art school. A very traditional one where I learned high realism. This enabled me to draw anything I could see with accuracy and so earn a living at various jobs… fashion design, portraits and courtroom sketching. But one day, my daughter asked me a question that I realize, in retrospect, set me on a whole new course in my art. She came home from school, they were taking history and she was in grade four or five… "Mon, why does it say 'man' did this, or 'man' discovered that?" And I tried to explain, "Man in this case means humans, all of a particular people or civilization in general, not an individual man."

So began my adventure in art using the female image to represent humanity. That has continued up until recently but is still pervasive in much of what I do. I've been making art all my life, having shows since the late sixties and being taken seriously since my first real exhibition using women in 1987. It was a performance/installation piece where I unwrapped and named a series of seven figures, five of which were life-size, to a tape consisting of wave sounds and a litany of women's names. It was called The Nurturing Circle and spoke of the roles many of us play in life.

The next series, Ageratos, came about because I lost the use of a large kiln and spent the winter doing small pastels to decide how to use clay with a small one. Breaking the clay up into sections was the answer. Ageratos finished its run at the Galerie d'art Université de Moncton in 1997.

The clay work became slightly more realistic in a three-person exhibition called Delta in 1998. My current work has been a series of heads, some of which are featured in this website.

Carol Taylor, 2000