Henry Taylor

Exhibitions

Artist Bio

American, born 1958, lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Born in Ventura, CA, Henry Taylor was initially exposed to the medium of painting through his father, who was a commercial painter at a naval air station. In junior high school, Taylor vigorously absorbed the major tenets of art historical discourse spanning the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. Taylor later studied journalism, anthropology, and set design at Oxnard College where he made the acquaintance of James Jarvaise, the Head of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts. Jarvaise was instrumental in instilling the young painter with a sense of vocational efficacy that helped Taylor focus his efforts entirely on his artistic practice. Taylor’s formal training came in the 1990s, when he studied at The California Institute of the Arts while also working as a psychiatric technician at Camarillo State Mental Hospital.

Taylor has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York (2012) and The Studio Museum in Harlem (2007). His work was also presented at the Whitney Biennial (2017) and the 58th Venice Biennale (2019). Taylor’s works are held in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, among others. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.