Henry Taylor

Henry Taylor is an acclaimed American artist known for his powerful and emotive portraits that capture the complexities of Black life and culture. Born in 1958 in Ventura, California, Taylor’s path to becoming a prominent figure in contemporary art was unconventional. He initially pursued a career as a psychiatric technician, working for a decade at a state hospital in Camarillo. This experience profoundly influenced his artistic practice, as it exposed him to a wide range of human experiences and emotions, which he later channelled into his art.

Taylor took art classes at Oxnard College in the 1980s and later attended the California Institute of the Arts, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1995. His work is deeply rooted in his personal experiences and the people around him, often drawing on his observations of friends, family and strangers to create intimate and socially resonant portraits. Taylor’s influences range from his life in Los Angeles, Depression-era documentary photography to works by painters such as Jacob Lawrence, Alice Neel and Romare Bearden.

Working largely in portraiture and figurative works, Henry Taylor doesn’t simply make paintings of people, but rather paintings about people. His art is celebrated for its directness, vibrancy and raw emotional power. His paintings often depict scenes from everyday life, but with a keen sense of the underlying social and political dynamics. There is intimacy in his pieces that can only be generated by an artist who is skilled at painting from life. Taylor describes the necessity of meeting people and asking to do their portrait, ’I would much rather paint somebody from life, seeing the light hit them, as opposed to looking at a photograph. There’s so many nuances when you sit somebody in front of you.’

Taylor’s hallmark style uses broad, expressive brushstroke to create vivid blocks of colour and spatial compositions, bringing a sense of immediacy and life to his subjects. His portraits are not merely representations of individuals but are rich with context and meaning, reflecting the histories and stories of those he paints.

In 2022, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles organised the first exhibition surveying 30 years of the artist’s work, titled Henry Taylor: B Side. Spanning his diverse output including painting, sculpture and installation, this comprehensive monograph travelled to the Whitney Museum of American Art for another viewing between 2023 and 2024. Other major exhibitions of Taylor’s work included a mid-career retrospective at MoMA PS1 in 2012. Henry Taylor now lives and works in Los Angeles.