Shannon Taylor: Minor Mending

Shannon Taylor is a painter, illustrator, and educator based out of Oakland, California. She is the Assistant Chair of the Illustration Program at the California College of the Arts, and has also been the Director of Art and Restoration at Children’s Fairyland in Oakland since 2012. Taylor exhibits her work all over the US, including showing work with Spoke Art, Hashimoto Contemporary, and Modern Eden in SF and Arch Enemy Arts in Philadelphia (among many others). Taylor’s client lists include Pikchur Magazine, Monsa Publications, Nooworks, Cincinnati Magazine, Field Day, and Discount Universe. She has been featured on podcasts such as the Jealous Curator’s “Art for your Ears”, and was the final recipient of the Artist in Residency at Redux Gallery/St. Vincent de Paul.

A highly prolific artist, Taylor has developed a style of watercolor that is distinctly her own, utilizing rich colors, layers of blending, dry-brushing, and pattern work, Taylor is constantly pushing and expanding on the possibilities of the medium. Often conjuring the decorative and figurative qualities of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and aesthetic movement, Taylor’s work is an exploration of beauty. In her paintings, heavy indigo skies are filled with stars, and flowers bloom from the backs of languid, lovely women; the world that Taylor has made is gilt, prismatic, and lovingly wrought.