Brian Taylor

He leaves the legacy of his life's work to his family. The sculptor Brian Taylor, who has died of liver cancer aged 77, was particularly fascinated by the study of human and animal forms. In 1956, when he was a student at the Slade School of Art in London, he produced a life-size portrait of Cissie, a closely observed head of his mother. Seen with... her hair in curlers, Cissie is portrayed with frank, clear eyed affection. And over half Century later, Taylor was still energetically engaged in modelling heads of his wife, Michele, their daughter, Belle, and his mother in law Beverly. Born into a working class family in Cheam, Surrey, he became obsessed as a child by natural history. Perpetually drawing while reading library books, he was encouraged by his art teacher at school. Then he joined his cousin, the painter Terry Setch, at Sutton and Cheam School of Art (5052). Taylor remembered it later as "Paradise", but his emotional involvement with an older woman became so traumatic that he attempted to take his own life. For nine months he was committed to Netherne hospital where he found the treatment both," strange and stimulating." Fortunately part of his therapy involved drawing and painting, and in 1953 he gained a place at Epsom and Ewell School of Art. The following year Taylor's linocuts were included in an exhibition at Zwemmer's Gallery, London. Still only 18 he was fascinated by Dostoevsky and such doom laden mythological themes as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But at Epsom, Taylor started to work more from the observed world focusing on "the study of people; their psychology, character and way of life." He was learning how to escape from gloomy introspection and look outwards. After entering the Slade in 1954, he was encouraged by Henry Moore on his visits to the school. They shared an admiration for early sculpture, which Taylor studied at the British Museum. In 1958 his life-size clay nude boy from Boy from Anyigua won him a three-year scholarship to Rome. Italian art proved a revelation, from ...Read More