Champneys Taylor
Still Life, Red
Acrylic, spray paint, and chalk pastel on canvas
52″ x 48″ x 1.5″
2020
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Artist Statement
Junk shops draw me in as meditative spaces. Printed matter, kitchen appliances, film cameras, record players — these objects, obsolete and discarded, still function as anthropological handles for memory. With that comes an electro-static energy that has potential for renewal. In my practice as an artist I re-animate household objects and pictorial images. By examining the morphological capacity of these once mass-produced items, I restore their power.
My studio is not a white box. The lighting is adequate, the ceiling, low. The space has been through multiple iterations over many years. Objects that I use as subjects in my paintings recede to cluttered backgrounds, on shelves or under tables, among LPs, stereo components, books, and boxed archives. I use stencils I created based on a small repertory of objects, including a blender, a mixer, and a table fan. I use spray paint for the stencils, rather than brushes, to make positive or negative outlines of the objects that codify ephemerality to the resulting images. With repeated use, the stencils curl and distort, and degrade. The resulting images, which capture a vocabulary I use throughout my work, combine the resonance of their original iconography and the anthropology of their makership.
