Henry Taylor

"It takes courage to do a lot of things. But, in a way, it doesn’t actually take courage, because you are free to do it. It’s like jumping in the water. The water’s cold, but you just jump in. You’ve gotta just jump in all the fucking time."

Taylor's largest output of work is in portraiture: he is known to paint obsessively, on various materials, including empty cigarette packs, detergent boxes, cereal boxes, suitcases, crates, bottles, furniture, and stretched canvas. His subjects include family, friends, patients (when employed at the hospital), acquaintances, strangers, waitresses, celebrities, homeless people, himself, and also historical figures, cultural figures, sports heroes, politicians, and individuals from photographs or other art works. At times, Taylor collapses time periods and spaces, as in Cicely and Miles Visit the Obamas (2017): in this work, Cicely Tyson and Miles Davis—painted after a famous photograph of the couple from 1968—are seen in front of the White House, alluding to their imaginary visit to the Obamas. Taylor's painterly style has been variously described as sensuous, vibrant, bold, fast and loose, full of empathy, generosity, and love, and the visual equivalent to blues music, while retaining a profound critical social sensibility. His work has been lauded for maintaining an impossible balance between careful and sophisticated art-world references with a seemingly spontaneous and natural expressiveness. Taylor's oeuvre has been aligned within various American lineages, including the portraiture tradition of Alice Neel, and the work of Harlem Renaissance painters such as Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, and compared with his peer Kerry James Marshall.

After 10 years of working as a psychiatric technician at Camarillo State Mental Hospital, Taylor retired in 1997. He attended the California Institute for the Arts, where in 1995, he obtained his Bachelor's of Fine Art.

Henry Taylor (born 1958) is an American artist and painter who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Taylor is most well known for his acrylic paintings, mixed media sculptures, and installations.