photo: Kevin Wilson
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It is the sheer visual presence of my subjects that fascinates me—not just the way they are, but the way they seem to be. This has necessarily meant working slowly from life, one canvas at a time.
Welcome to my new website. Intended primarily as an online gallery featuring a selection of my paintings from over the years, I will also keep it updated with recent, current and forthcoming news in these posts.
To mark the occasion I have selected one picture from each of the five categories listed in the menus: Figures, Interiors, Still Lifes, Heads and Portraits. I am aware that these groupings may appear fairly arbitrary. Indeed many paintings might be in any, or several catagories, but we felt it helpful to break them up a bit for convenience and accessibility.
Many thanks to Philip Rees (Reflecting Head) for creating it for me, for taking such care and pains over its design and construction and for his patience with my low-tech nature.
I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for looking.
Korean Pot with Flints is shortly off to the framers, and is the final work destined for my forthcoming exhibition ‘Still Life’ at the Portland Gallery from 5th-20th of June 2025.
The ceramic pot was a birthday gift this year from my son and Korean daughter in law. Its timeless form and rich umber glaze brought to my mind the bronze and iron age pottery to be found buried amongst the flints in our ancient and ceremonial Dorset chalk landscape.
for enquiries: jasmine@portlandgallery.com
Alfie Robinson, from the accompanying catalogue notes.
Michael Taylor’s new collection of still lives are an invitation to look — and to think about looking. The paintings allow us to inhabit spaces and range over textures. Carefully observed over several months of work, the pictures’ sense of reality is deceptive.
It is over ten years now since I was commissioned by Wes Anderson to create the fictional renaissance ‘masterpiece’ Boy with Apple (by my alter ego Johannes Van Hoytl, the younger) for his wonderful movie The Grand Budapest Hotel. The original painting has now been loaned by Wes from his personal collection to a major retrospective exhibition of his work in Paris.
The exhibition, at la Cinémathèque Française, follows the evolution of his films from his first experiments in the 1990s, up to his most recent Oscar-winning productions. With original props, costumes, and behind-the-scenes insights, including from his personal collection, this exhibition offers an unprecedented look into the world of Wes Anderson.
A collaboration with the Design Museum, the exhibition will move on to their London space in November 2025 before, in Wes’s words “It becomes a travelling circus”, and so begins an extended world tour in 2026.
Definitely time now to go and watch the film again…..
Curator Johanna Agerman Ross (from the exhibition catalogue)
….the stature of Boy with Apple eventually transcended the screen altogether. It was treated differently to all other props during filming, being packed in its own crate and staying with Anderson himself throughout the shoot. Subsequently, it has gained its own Wikipedia page and become Taylor’s most famous work.
I am currently working towards my forthcoming exhibition at the Portland Gallery this coming June.
Largely consisting of peaceful and contemplative new still life compositions, the exhibition (my first with the Portland) runs from 5th-20th June 2025 and will be held on the lower floor of the gallery.
For enquiries about the exhibition please contact Jasmine Winter jasmine@portlandgallery.com Portland Gallery, 3 Bennet St, London SW1A 1RP
Illustrated is a detail from one of the new works featuring a porcelain Korean calligrapher’s water dropper.
I am pleased to now be represented by Portland Gallery, London and will be showing new works with them in June 2025.
This is a happy development for me having worked with Jamie Anderson for sixteen years at Waterhouse and Dodd before he moved to be director of Portland, so he is already aware of all my quirks and foibles. I now look forward to working with the team at the Gallery which is situated just off Piccadilly at 3 Bennett Street, London SW1A 1RP.
Portland Gallery are leading dealers in Modern and Contemporary British art. Their two-floor gallery in St James’s hosts up to fourteen exhibitions a year; largely solo presentations of work by their represented artists and estates. Throughout the history of the gallery, their exhibition programme has concentrated primarily in representing the best modern and contemporary figurative artists working in traditional media. In parallel, Portland are dealers in abstract paintings and sculptures by some of the most prominent figures of 20th century British Art.
