E.D. Taylor – artist

Human Equation

As an artist, I investigate the mystery and power of the human form. At the same time, I grapple with the transience of the human condition. This confrontation with the hard fact of mortality necessitates experimentation and playfulness. So my meticulous artwork combines aspects of comedy and disquiet. Methods and materials range widely from performance art to building sculpturally with ceramic stucco. I challenge myself to master processes that best express the obsessions fueling my work.

I can’t let go of this art habit—when in the zone, I’m a bitch worrying her bone. 

Biography

Early in life I discovered a love of and facility for art-making beginning with passionate, clandestine crayon scribblings on my mom’s freshly painted walls. While still in high school I decided to study art seriously and later attended the University of Utah. (I was born and raised non-Mormon in Salt Lake City.) Soon after getting my degree in painting and drawing, I stumbled into a dirt cheap art studio in a creaky old building with peeling paint and terrible wiring called “The Guthrie.” Tiny, no frills storage units have cost more than that large room, my friend! I count myself lucky there was never a fire … although there was the time I accidentally locked myself out on the fire escape and had to climb two floors down a scary ladder into a filthy and even scarier alley. …

For a year and six months, I built a portfolio for submission to several graduate-level art programs, landing at Rhode Island School of Design. Since earning my Master of Fine Arts from RISD, my artwork has been seen in PIEROGI Gallery Brooklyn's Flat Files, Ingenuity Fest and the Erie Art Museum, among more. Together with other works in progress, I’m currently creating a series of five-foot-tall paintings/collages collectively called Humaniforms.