Stephen Taylor studied Fine Art at Leeds University with T.J. Clark and was taught observational painting by Paul Gopal Choudhury, with subsidiaries in Philosophy and Theology. He then studied perception and technique in John Constable as a post graduate at Essex University and visiting student at Yale.
His is a story that is uplifting in its universal ethos that you do
what you know, and you make all that you can of it. Now, five years
after Taylor packed up his easel and left the field for the last
time, a book has been published of 50 of his paintings from that
time. Entitled simply Oak, it is full of analysis of sunlight and
shadow, of gradients of paint and how the eye plays tricks on the
mind. It is the diary of an artisan, obsessive in its chronicling
of technique and the thought processes that led to the final image.
--Huffington Post
Some books show you how to laugh, some show you how to think, but,
every once a while, one will show you how to live. The exquisite
Oak: One Tree, Three Years, and Fifty Paintings follows of the
story of artist Stephen Taylor who decided to paint the same oak
tree in the English countryside every day for three years.... As
the oak changes by the month or hour, the surrounding environment
changes.... A singular plant becomes a talisman for the passage of
time and seasons--and you, as viewer--begin to change too, becoming
more observant and aware of the tiny yet enormous natural
transformations that take place each day and minute. Seeing--in the
truest sense--is the lesson here, one that's taught with such
elegance that you'll be bewitched into stopping and contemplating
the birch or maple in your own yard that's serving--as T.S. Elliot
once described trees--as 'the still point of the turning world.'
--Oprah.com
Taylor's words make you stop and linger over each painting and make
you study the relationship the oak tree has with neighboring
elements. It doesn't take long before you are able to feel the
light Taylor painted, hear the crunch of his leaves, and hear the
sound of wheat brushing up against his legs. -- ArtPlantae Today
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