Nicola Taylor

From the Sunday Times, UK:

Nicola Taylor: the artist who paints high above Tower Bridge

With a makeshift studio high above Tower Bridge, Nicola Taylor is a painter with the loftiest living in London

No wonder that the 24-year-old Taylor is chuffed to have been chosen as the first artist in residence in the glass walkways high above Tower Bridge. “It’s ideal,” says Taylor, pretty and polished despite the mucky art apron she wears in her narrow, makeshift studio. “The first time I came up here I couldn’t believe it. It’s as if you’re hovering above the water right in the middle of the Thames.”

She’s right. Facing west as Taylor does, it looks as though the imposing HMS Belfast is heading straight underneath you, while the bulbous City Hall looms to the left, and the hazy peaks of St Paul’s, Tate Modern and the BT Tower span the skyline.

But it gets better. Not only is Taylor paid to study this view, she is under no pressure to produce finished work, she is free to indulge her own style and interests and, best of all, she still owns all the work afterwards. So what’s the catch? Perhaps it has something to do with the crowd of people peering at us from behind the cordon.

“The idea is that people can watch and ask me questions, and then have a go themselves at tables farther down,” Taylor explains. The walkways — built as footpaths when the bridge opened frequently in the 19th century, and yes, also the venue for the 2006 final of The Apprentice — host the Tower Bridge Exhibition, and a different family activity each summer. This year, it’s SEE an Artist, BE an Artist, commissioned by the Guy Fox History Project Limited, an educational charity.

Taylor, who is South African, found out about the project when she bumped into an old friend from Cape Town, now working for Guy Fox. He phoned Taylor to invite her to be interviewed for the project, and it turned out that her work, focused on depicting beauty, suited their purposes perfectly. She now alternates with another artist, Carlos Calvet Ortin.

“Being watched took some getting used to,” Taylor says, “but I’m starting to really enjoy it. The responses are really mixed. Some people are so excited, they come up and want to chat for hours, and other times parents are really cautious and they tell their children to come up and watch quietly.” So far, plenty have taken up the offer and had a go themselves, mostly children, enthusiastically scribbling out giant, colourful Gherkins, huge people on little bridges and even more creative interpretations of the view, such as a teddy bear policeman.

But how is she tackling such a famous view? “London is layer on top of layers — there’s an incredible amount of information — so it’s a simplification process. I wanted to do loads of sketches before doing a big piece. Personally what I find really interesting is the different channels you can follow along the rooftops, not only the skyline but within the buildings as well, so it’s almost an abstract thing,” she says, showing me several sketches and watercolours.

“It’s interesting; painting this landscape always used to be about celebrating the commercial growth of London, but now the focus has shifted, there are negative connotations,” she observes, when I mention the art-historical precedents. Not that she’s expecting to join the canon. “Oh no, I don’t feel like I’m in line with them at all. No, no, it’s not even vaguely the same.”

Born in Johannesburg, Taylor declared in a home video when she was 4 that she was going to be an artist, and fulfilled it by moving to Florence to study drawing after she finished school. She then returned to Cape Town to study politics, philosophy and economics, before moving to London.

She has been here for a year and a half, paying a knockdown rent to live in a three-storey house in Notting Hill, shared with a friend who owns it. She has just graduated from the Art Academy in Southwark. “I had an amazingly positive experience there,” she says, “but I think it was because I knew what I wanted to get out of it.” Almost her entire graduate show sold and she already has several commissions for portraits, and even some open ones — “the best kind, where people like my work and they just want something from me.”

Taylor plans to stay in London until the end of the year, when she will return to Johannesburg — “a very up-and-coming art scene” — where she has already found representation with a gallery and has a solo show next year.

There is one tiny downside to her stint at Tower Bridge — the lifts are out of order until September. “There’s, like, 207 steps,” she pants, on our way up. “You’d think you’d get used to it, doing it every day, but . . . not so much.”

SEE an Artist, BE an Artist is at Tower Bridge until Aug 30

See:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article6802196.ece

Nicola Taylor Featured in ‘The South African’:

17 August 2009 0:00
SA artist earns lofty London residency
A young South African painter is one of the first artists in residence at one of the finest viewpoints in the city – Tower Bridge. by Whitney Nel

While many artists have rendered the London skyline, only two can boast a view from Tower Bridge. South African painter Nicola Taylor is one of them.

This summer, for the first time in the history of the bridge, one of the high-level walkways between the two towers has become an artist’s studio. Along with Spanish painter Carlos Calvet, Taylor will occupy the studio five afternoons a week until the end of August.
The residency is part of an initiative called ‘See An Artist. Be An Artist’, run by educational charity the Guy Fox Project. Whistler and Monet – who famously painted the city from rooms in the Savoy  Hotel – would surely have envied the two young artists their vantage point above the Thames, although perhaps not the interruptions from curious passersby.

“It’s a bit like being in a zoo!” says Taylor, whose easel is stationed in a roped-off area of the walkway. Here, visitors watch her sketch compositions and select colours, and are often eager to talk about their own art. “It’s great to be able to share my work immediately, as opposed to the loneliness of the studio,” she says.

There are art materials in a designated section of the walkway, so that visitors inspired by the view and the artists’ work can try their hands at a cityscape. Their sketches are then scanned and uploaded to the Guy Fox Project website.

Taylor, who comes from Johannesburg, has been studying at The Art Academy in London for the past two years. After completing her matric, she spent a semester studying painting at the Lorenzo de’ Medici school in Florence. She continued her studies at the University of Cape Town before moving to London. Encouraged by a friend, she submitted her portfolio to the Guy Fox Project and was selected for the summer residency in Tower Bridge.

Working from the bridge, she explains, affords a curious view of the city. “Whatever you draw, it looks as if you’re hovering, suspended above the water.” While depictions of the London skyline have tended to celebrate the city’s bustling industry, Taylor believes this kind of celebration is no longer possible, given increasing concern over climate change and environmental damage. Industry continues – Taylor has counted up to 27 cranes at one time – but it’s no longer unequivocally positive.

Her position on the bridge does, however, offset the commercial bustle of the capital. “I didn’t anticipate the calming effect of the water,” she says. “Visually, it’s almost the perfect antidote to the chaos of the city.” A bird’s eye view has also given the daily bustle meaning beyond mere chaos: “It’s given me a strong sense of common experience. We’re all down there, running around like ants, but we’re all in this together.”

Taylor will return to Johannesburg in September, to begin work on her first solo show at the Everard Read Gallery in 2010. ‘See An Artist. Be An Artist’ runs until August 30. For more details, visit www.gufox.org.uk. To view Taylor’s work, visit www.nicolataylor.net.

http://london.thesouthafrican.com/living-in-london/SA-artist-earns-lofty-London-residency