10 October – 1st December, 2009
MICHAEL TAYLOR
VENEER

Leather Mask Sculptures
An exquisite exhibition of sculptured masks

Selected Works now in the Main Gallery

Opened Saturday 10th October at 2.30pm by Meredith Hinchliffe, Journalist and Arts Reviewer

Born in Burlingame, California, Michael Taylor is a graduate of both San José State and San Francisco Universities, where he studied art, sculpture and marine biology. At a graduate level he worked with renowned artists/teachers John Battenburg and Fletcher Benton and while enjoying oil painting and the genre of portraiture, he eventually moved almost entirely into welded sculpture.

After graduating he spent three years sailing around the world in a 17 metre yacht built with his father, returning to the US to continue his career as an artist. A 1976 commission in San Francisco to make a mask proved to be a pivotal point in his life. Between 1984 and 1988 he undertook a study tour focussing on masks. He made masks using native leathers and worked with local artists in Mexico, Hawaii, Fiji, Australia and South Africa.