Salisbury artist’s oil painting wins top prize in national VA competition
Published 12:00 am Tuesday, September 19, 2017
- James E. Taylor titled his winning piece 'After Snowstorm, Sun on a January Morning.' It's a scene from his former home in Deerfield, Mass., and is a Gold Medal winner in the 2017 National Veterans Creative Arts Festival. Submitted photo
Staff report
SALISBURY — James E. Taylor, a Salisbury oil painter, has won a 2017 Gold Medal in the nationwide Veterans Administration Creative Competition Festival.
Taylor plans to attend the festival, which will be held in late October at Western New York Veteran Medical Center in Buffalo, New York.
His winning entry is titled “After Snowstorm, Sun on a January Morning.” The 18-by-36-inch oil on canvas depicts a scene in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where Taylor once lived.
Taylor works out of the Contemporary Realism Studio in Salisbury, and his home VA is the Hefner VA Medical Center here. He won the local gold medal in March and his painting advanced through the regional to the national festival.
Taylor paints in oil and watercolor mediums in his studio during the day and teaches workshops in oil atelier traditional painting on a private basis. He also demonstrates occasionally to art groups and formerly had a gallery in downtown Salisbury.
Taylor says his emphasis begins with developing solid drawing skills, moving into and through alla prima painting methods and toward creative picture ideas.
“This is designed to provide the student with solid foundation in creative painting techniques and solutions to enable effective self-expression in painting,” he says.
Taylor has a background in industrial photography, graphic design, illustration and teaching art. He retired from a long and varied career in photography in the Navy during the Vietnam era, then spent many years doing editorial and advertising illustrations in New York and Boston.
He has been painting and winning awards for 55 years. Taylor continues to work and exhibits nationally and locally, including in Salisbury in places such as the South Main Book Co., Salisbury Wine Shop, Sweet Meadow Cafe and Mean Mug Coffee.
Taylor’s work is in many public and private collections in the Boston area. He is locally represented by Fine Frame Gallery in Salisbury and in Charlestowne, Rhode Island, by the Charlestowne Gallery.
He can be contacted through his website at jamesetaylorfineart.com.
