I went to meet artist Marion Taylor in her new St Michael’s studio in Bridport expecting to find the painter half way through a Colmer’s Hill painting for which she is famous. Instead, from a large canvas Eggardon Hill was beginning to take life.
In the square studio, Dorset Arts Week guides were neatly waiting to be distributed, acrylic paint tubes -strictly organised- were leaning in a wooden box ready to be picked, a bird’s custard advert was standing out like a little wink from her past. I remember noticing the little canvas when she was in ‘Studio in the Attic’ and it has followed her in Studio 6.
Marion's tidy studio in St Michaels' Studios, Bridport
Marion has lived in villages near Bridport, West Dorset for twenty five years. Her late husband was Head Gardener for local estates including Cecil Beaton for the latter part of the great photographer’s life. “He even taught my daughter how to walk. He’d call her and she’d crawl across the garden and use his stick to stand up! He was such a lovely man. We were very lucky to live in such remote places, it was wonderful to bring up children in the middle of nowhere. It was a bit strange too, as some of these places were quite feudal.” Sadly, Marion was widowed but later re-married Industrial Historian Richard Sims.
It’s no surprise that Marion studied Textile Design at Art College. Her style is very graphic. “I like to get back to the essence, get rid of all the distractions and simplify”. She loves 1930′s Railway adverts especially Norman Wilkinson and Paul Henry. “They really make me want to go there”. She also loves Patrick Caulfield and his black outlines, has a passion for West Dorset artist Robin Ray and enjoys the work of Frieda Kahlo, Klimt and Paul Nash.
You can see their inspiration in her work. On the one hand, Marion’s current work is about the West Dorset landscape, particularly the hills but she also loves still lives and the patterns in flowers or butterflies showing her talent at depicting intricate details. Her botanical watercolours evolved into landscapes and buildings when she was an illustrator for Dorset Magazine and the Wessex Journal. Plants, folklore and local history found their way into her drawings, sometimes illustrating her writing.
She now works in acrylics “I can’t bear it if there’s a bump on my canvas. It’s got to be flat. I trained in gouache and then I hand tinted old maps and prints. My favourite was Cruikshank’s ‘Hydromania” she says smiling, and then adds laughing: “I could paint rosy cheeks! ”
“So where is your painting of Bridport rooftops?” I ask, hoping she’s hidden it somewhere and I can see it in the flesh, having discovered it on Facebook a couple of days before. “It’s at the framers”. I’ll have to wait until Bridport Open Studios then; along with ‘The Fox’ they have been put aside for her August exhibition. “Why the rooftops Marion? It’s quite different from your landscapes”. “I got inspired by a photograph I found on the net and it’s been quite hard work because the lines have to be exactly straight”. They would…
Everything has to be just so. She uses tiny brushes (from 00 to 2). “Acrylics are quite tough on paint brushes so I go through at least a couple a week. I build 3 or 4 layers to get to the right colour”. Colours are of course very central to her work; vibrant ones. When she walks around West Dorset with her husband Richard -who apart from being an Industrial Historian knows a thing or two about Geology from a previous life-, she’ll marvel at the greens or the colour of the rocks, he’ll explain how old the rocks formations are or why the hills are this shape or that (possibly whilst thinking she’s in Cloud Cookoo Land, again).
She loves the forever changing light sweeping across the land. “Was that tree always there?” she recalls as an example of a walk with Marion “I’ve lived here 25 years and I’ve never noticed it before. But then the sun was shining on it and suddenly it was noticeable”. Marion has translated these changing landscapes and moving shadows onto long canvases entitled ‘Pent-Amorous’. “I think that landscapes can be quite sensual. You can imagine a woman… languid” her hands draw soft curves or gently moving waves in the air and she is smiling again.
Marion’s work does make me smile, in a happy kind of way. “I paint for myself” she muses. “I don’t care if it sells or if people like it. I just want to get across how I feel about a hill or a landscape. I’ve become quite attached to Eggardon recently and really attached to Colmer’s”. She talks of the hills like they are friends that only need a first name. A bout of ill-health a few years ago has made her realise what is important in life and helps her focus her mind. When she starts a painting she is “a nightmare for a couple of days” until the painting takes over, the rhythm gets going and she feels happy following the brush where her focused and structured mind takes her. Six to eight weeks later, her painting is ready.
Come and discover Marion Taylor’s Bridport Roofs, Fox and other work for Bridport and West Dorset Open Studios in August. Eggardon and Colmer will probably be there too but then who knows which hill will inspire Marion next, there are plenty to choose from in West Dorset.
