The Wellington Art Society will open its new season with a demonstration and talk by internationally renowned ceramicist and printmaker Maxwell Taylor on Wednesday, Sept. 11 at the Wellington Community Center.
The meet-and-greet begins at 6:30 p.m., followed by a member spotlight and a brief meeting. The evening will conclude with the demonstration by Taylor.
Taylor was born on New Providence Island, Bahamas. His artistic talent was discovered as a young schoolboy, and early in life he was apprenticed to the fabled Chelsea Pottery. He later moved to New York and studied at the Art Students League of New York and took further studies in photo silkscreen at the Pratt Graphic Center and printmaking at the Printmaking Workshop. His commitment to black power artists is evidenced in his woodcuts, etchings and stark canvases. He admired and was influenced by Daumier, Braque and Picasso.
Taylor left New York after 20 years and traveled to South Carolina and Europe, observing the social, economic and political dynamics of many cultures but never forgetting his Bahamian roots. In 1983, he was one of 10 artists selected to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Bahamian Independence.
This versatile artist and accomplished technician has become a master of a variety of media. He is renowned for his ceramics and paintings, but it is in his printmaking that he excels, using an ancient technique of cutting wood. In his career, he has explored themes of universality, despair, celebration and atrocities.
Taylor has had a one-man show in Nassau, was represented in the exhibition “Bahamian Art Today” at Brent Malone’s Matinee Gallery and is found in the collections of Nat King Cole and Sir Harry Christie. He received the Fellowship Award from the Southern Arts Federation for works on paper by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Wellington Art Society is a nonprofit charitable organization in its 37th year. It is open to artists of all mediums and patrons of the arts. For more information, visit www.wellingtonartsociety.org.
