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| Don Taylor and work-in-progress. |
PANAMA CITY — Touring Don Taylor’s home off State
390 is a lesson in local history and art, as he and his wife, Louisa, recount
the house’s former occupants and location while showing their collection of
works from across the world.
Art has been in Don’s life since his childhood,
growing up in St. Augustine.
“My father went to art school and did metal
crafting,” Don said. “He turned down an animation job offer from Disney in
1930. He painted as a hobby and gave the paintings away to friends.”
Reaching his upstairs studio and classroom space, Don
held up a work-in-progress showing three cooks busy in a kitchen. He photographed
the men through a large plate glass window using a telephoto lens, then
combined his favorite poses into a single composition.
“You’ll never get a photograph that’s got everything
you want in the right places,” he said. “Don’t try to copy the photograph. Pick
what you want out of it and recompose.”
(One of the day-classes he’s teaching at the Panama
City Beach Senior Center this month covers sketching designs based on a
favorite photo.)
“The thing I really enjoy, probably more than
anything else,” Don said, is sketching and painting from real life. He’s filled
books with sketches and watercolors of sites he’s visited in his travels, and
he said every detail of that day is imprinted in his memory when he does so.
“I can take thousands of photos (on a trip) and six
months later I’m hard pressed to tell your where in the world I was,” he said.
“But with these (sketches) I become totally absorbed in it. I can tell you
everything — where I was, what was going on around me.”
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| Sample from Taylor's sketchbooks. |
Don had never heard of Panama City before he
attended veterinarian school at Auburn University. His next-door neighbor had
lived here though, and, “I came down and spent Christmas with them here, and
when I finished school I moved here in 1972,” he said.
He established a veterinary practice, Gulf Coast
Animal Hospital, which he sold 15 years ago to spend more time painting. Now,
he only works relief days at the practice. Don is also a veteran of the Vietnam
conflict, where he served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Don started painting as a form of stress relief, and
found he loved doing it.
“You forget all your problems and worries,” he said.
“It’s not like work, it’s something I totally enjoy.”
Don began teaching painting “a number of years ago,”
and has a waiting list for new students. He teaches in his upstairs classroom
space, as well as local galleries and recreation centers, and far-flung
workshops, such as one scheduled at Blue Ridge, Ga., in June.
He began entering shows almost as soon as he started
painting fulltime, about 15 years ago, and has won numerous awards and recognitions
across the country. Most recently, Don was recognized by the American Artists
Professional League for his watercolor painting “Heaven’s Glow.”
“We are extremely proud to recognize some of
America’s finest artists, and our award winners’ work epitomizes the quality of
art that our organization strives to support,” said Peter Rossi, AAPL
president, in remarks at the 86th annual Grand National Exhibition held in
November 2014 in New York City.
Don also has served on many art association boards;
he is a past president of the Southern Watercolor Society and past member of
the Board of Directors at the Visual Arts Center of Northwest Florida.
“We have a wonderful local group of artists,” he
said. “A lot of them have been painting 20 or 30 years, and still have a good
time.”
In the artist’s statement on his website,
DonTaylorArt.com, Don said he hopes his art will evoke the same feelings in the
viewer that he experienced when first seeing the subject — “the sense that
there is more to the subject than mere rendering. ... I attempt to apply the
illusion of detail in many works so that viewers can use their imagination to
complete the image. Sometimes less is more.”
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