On a wall in the Rebekah Jacob Gallery appears the phrase, "We are nature, and nature is indistinguishable from us on so many levels," an idea that embodies painter Kevin Taylor's new exhibit Inner Wilderness, which features the animals that Taylor has become known for. In this latest exhibit, his animal paintings have taken on a new dimension.
Rebekah Jacob believes the realism comes from Taylor's illustration background. Taylor attended the Savannah College of Art and Design majoring in illustration and took his first painting class his senior year. He draws first, then paints, and he plays with dimensions and brush strokes.
In "Chemistry Hypnosis" you can also see the pencil outlines of another creature that Taylor decided not to paint. Jacob says that even though he'd decided against painting the animal, he felt it had become part of the work. "If you turn over the canvases, you'll see a lot of pencil marks on the back of his paintings,"she adds.
Inner Wilderness encompasses numerous contradictions. The show uses neutral colors but does not appear muted.
There is a lightness in the paintings, but an overwhelming sense of heaviness in the subject matter. And the majority of the subjects are animals yet are personified. It's these paradoxes that make the work so interesting.
As heavy as the subject matter is, it's not just for adults. "The children that have come in have been great. They go from painting to painting naming the animals and making up stories about them," Jacob says. It's another example of the show's duality. There's such gravity to the paintings, but there's also a sense of whimsy, which adds an interesting dynamic to the exhibit.
Melissa Tunstall for the charleston city paper, november 2013