Brianna Taylor

Artist's work awash in abstractions
The Springfield Republican, January 26, 2005
By Diane Lederman, AMHERST

Briana Taylor says she's drawn to glass and architecture, not whole buildings but abstractions that show an arc or a railing for example.

She likes to "take everyday things, things you might not see" and paint them.Brianna Taylor

Twelve of the Holyoke artist's paintings are now on display at Town Hall here, the first of four solo exhibits that will hang this year. Her work will be on display through March. Sponsored by the Public Art Commission, the idea for the exhibits is to showcase one artist's work, rather than the yearlong display that featured the work of about a dozen artists.

This exhibit is Taylor's first solo one since 1999. She had taken some time away from painting after her father died in 2001. Having her work here at Town Hall has "given me the motivation to get back at it."

Taylor, 39, paints from photographs she takes because she uses acrylic, which dries too quickly for her to paint outside.

All her paintings have a story. For example the idea for the painting titled "Conventional Matrimony" came from the photograph she took at a fish fry restaurant in Rockport, where she and her husband, Antonio Costa, had gone the day they eloped in 2000. The painting depicts salt and pepper shakers and a bowl of sugar and the pink of Sweet 'n Low packages on a table, with the hint of newspaper stories on the windowsill.

She was thinking about the controversy about gay marriage and "it's so crazy ... and puritanical that people aren't accepting of the way people want to live." She said the painting was originally called "Unconventional Matrimony" until someone pointed out that she had painted a salt shaker and pepper shaker not two of each kind. So she changed the title to "Conventional Matrimony." Taylor had been reading the work of poet Sylvia Plath and that inspired the title for a painting called "Sylvia's Ball Jar." She said the jar, a Ball Jar, had been filled with water on her table, but with the flowers gone, the water caught the reflection from the light. The image she said "made me think about the quiet. I like quiet reflection."

Another painting in the exhibit is called "Watson and Crick's idea," a nod to the competing scientists who discovered the DNA molecule, shaped like a double helix. The painting is of a railing at Fitzwilly's restaurant in Northampton. She said she is a bit of a science geek.

Taylor returned to school to study painting about 11 years ago, enrolling in the visual arts program at Holyoke Community College, and later went on to the Frances Perkins program for older students at Mount Holyoke College, where she received her bachelor's degree in studio art in 1998.

With her husband supporting her work, she has been able to paint full-time for about two years. That means seven days a week, for nearly as long as the light is good, she said.

She has been painting flowers from pictures she has taken at her mother's Ludlow garden. Her mother, Betty Ann Taylor, is a Master Gardener with beautiful flowers, she said.

Her next batch of paintings will be abstracts of motorcycles. She and her husband have motorcycles and she said, "I spent a lot of time looking at them." She loves the chrome and the reflections. "They are so beautiful."

Town Hall is open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. There will be an opening reception March 3 during the monthly gallery walk in town.