Rodney Taylor, Untitled, House Series #1, 2019
Flashe paint, earth clay, water, pencil, pastel on Lennox 100 paper
60 × 60 inch paper, 66 x 66 inches framed

Rodney Taylor (1966 - 2019) created somber, yet hopeful, paintings utilizing materials such as acrylic, flashe, pastel, pencil, and clay to channel the frantic energy of our environment and highlight the vulnerabilities of a changing world. 

Born in Buffalo, Ny and residing in a predominantly Black neighborhood on the city’s east side, Taylor left for New York in the mid 1980s. He pursued a BFA at FIT, followed by stints at Cooper Union (1993), Skowhegan (1994), and finally Bard as the Milton Avery Fellow in 1996. Despite inclusion in group exhibitions in New York in the mid-90s, Taylor received little recognition from the art world. He returned to Buffalo in 1999, following a diagnosis of kidney disease, where he lived and worked until his sudden death in 2019 at the age of 53.

Taylor’s works are marked by a blending of abstract and representational elements, rendered with loose, confident, and erratic brush strokes. He explored a wide range of narrative topics, including environmental destabilization, political and social uprisings, economic disparities, and the tenuous nature of his own health. These interests manifested in series that depicted complex colorful forests of birch trees, in various states of growth and decay; large-scale black and white gridded matrices that appear like electrical grids or aerial views of city blocks - an ode to the micro and macrocosms of a humming community; and views of the external world through an interior window - a common sight for Taylor as he underwent significant medical treatment throughout his life.

Speaking a similar visual language to the color-field abstractionists, Taylor’s treatment of color recalls the works of Clyfford Still or Mark Rothko, coupled with the frenetic compositions of Brice Marden, who was a close friend. However, instead of replicating their peripheral scale and contemplative nature, Taylor created destabilizing monoliths. He was fascinated by perpetual degradation - materially and conceptually - often incorporating materials like clay that would fail over time. Painting with a fresco-like technique, which he often then excavated, the surfaces of his works appear soft yet brittle, some like skin, bark, or dried riverbeds - material manifestations of ruin.

Towards the end of his life, Taylor began his Untitled House Series, which is the subject of this presentation. Inspired by the economic disparities of his neighborhood in Buffalo, the series examines the vulnerability and instability of housing, in a city that is at odds with and withholds resources from specific populations. These works on paper depict washy, ghost-like structures on and absorbed by indiscernible atmospheric backgrounds of color. Ranging in scale from monumental to intimate, the homes appear to fade in and out of a fog of shifting hues – some are depicted structurally sound and present, others in decay - a shell of their former selves. Applying clay on the surface of paper and canvas, he built up and excavated this texture, which composes each rendering of the structures. Taylor approached the notion of home as a fraught, fractured space that is not guaranteed, especially in his own community. In a space where we hope to feel the safest, he was keenly aware of the shaky ground on which he stood. 

Including 4 works from this series, the is the first presentation of this work, which has remained preserved in his home studio since his death in 2019.

To inquire, please email Olivia McManus at olivia@rivalryprojects.com.

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About the Artist

Rodney Taylor (b. 1966 - d. 2019) created somber, yet hopeful, paintings utilizing materials such as acrylic, flashe, pastel, pencil, and clay to channel the frantic energy of our environment and highlight the vulnerabilities of a changing world. Prior to his passing in 2019, Taylor exhibited widely across Western New York, with solo presentations at Nina Freudenheim, Eleven Twenty Projects, UB Art Galleries, and Hallwalls Contemporary Center. Most recently, Taylor was included in Open House: Domestic Thresholds, alongside Heather Hart and Edra Soto, at the Albright Knox Northland. Other Group exhibitions include presentations at Rochester Contemporary Art Center; Empire Fine Arts, Miami; Langston Hughes Cultural Center, Buffalo; The Drawing Center, New York; Kenny Schacter; and the Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, among others. Taylor was a resident at Skowhegan in 1994, and attended FIT, Cooper Union, and matriculated from Bard in 1996. He lived in Buffalo with his wife and four children until his death in 2019.

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