Michael Taylor RP

Michael Taylor was born in Sussex and studied at the Worthing School of Art (1969-70) and Goldsmiths School of Art (1970-73). He has received many awards for his paintings, and undertaken a number of important portrait commissions. Four of his works are in the National Portrait Gallery, London: portraits of the musician Julian Bream, the composer Sir John Tavener, the writer P D James, Baroness James of Holland Park and a self portrait.

His chosen way of working inevitably leads to a certain complexity of content that only reveals itself with time and familiarity. As Mary Rose Beaumont wrote: “the paintings do not simply record what is seen, but also what might be seen with the inner eye. They represent thoughts and feelings that are not visible. They are for the individual who is prepared to let them enter his bloodstream, who will return again and again to savour the slow release quality of these remarkable paintings”.

Image: Michael Taylor RP, Self-Portrait

RP Member Michael Taylor has an extensive list of awards throughout his career beginning in 1981. The most recent the Smallwood Architects Prize by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 2018. The Smallwood Architects Prize of £1,000, inaugurated in 2016, is awarded for a portrait in which architectural or interior features play an important part.

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