Sunny Taylor‘s website explains, “In her work, she is re-engaging painting’s geometric tradition, positioning herself within a network of influences who explored the “objecthood” of painting, as well as the surface’s potential for formal expression. Her works embody a built, almost sculptural aesthetic, with strong ties to architectural influences. Her compositions and patterns develop through meticulous, labor-intensive processes and spontaneous interactions with paint, color, texture and meaning.”

Taylor received a BFA from BYU and an MFA from The Ohio State University. She taught as an assistant professor from 2008-14 in the Studio Arts program of BYU and now lives and paints with her family in Utah.

How do you conceptualize your shapes, colors, and designs. Do you do color studies? Sketches? All of the above.  I sketch patterns and forms often, and always in black and white.  Color is so difficult.  With most works, I begin conceptualizing color by compiling a rough color study sketch of my intended painting in photoshop.  Then, I begin to paint.  The painting NEVER turns out like the sketch, and at a certain point in the process, I stop referring to my sketches, and begin struggling with the paint and the painting itself. That’s where the real gratification comes for me.  The process of painting can be so amazingly challenging.  I use my sketches and studies to get me started basically, and then during the process of painting, color changes, surface texture builds, edges develop, and patterns and shapes move and change in order to “resolve” the image.  Towards the end of the process, I spend a lot of time just staring at the painting.  I stare, I turn it upside down – I experiment with cropping out edges and shapes – then I stare some more.  I know the painting is finally complete when nothing leaves me feeling uneasy.  It just feels “right”.

What is next for you and your art? I will be showing a couple of paintings in a group show at the Rio Gallery in Salt Lake City this July.  The show is about “Clothing.”  The work I’m making for the show is killing me!  I decided to make some paintings that have a really intricate fabric weave pattern, with the thought that the tedious and repetitive process would help me to understand and empathize with the countless individuals throughout the world who work in factories in the clothing industry.  These paintings have been mind-numbing and physically exhausting.  Although I will never understand what its like to perform tedious and repetitive tasks, day in and day out, for years — I do know now what it is like to do so for at least several weeks.  I can empathize to a degree with those individuals behind the scenes of our garment production, and I appreciate them and my clothing much more than before. – I look forward to this show.  It will be with several of my good friends and colleagues from BYU.

Visit Sunny Taylor’s website.

Follow Sunny Taylor on Instagram.

Louise Parker is a talented South African painter incorporating African designs, colors, and themes with gospel stories and characters. She recently moved from Port Elizabeth, a small coastal town, to Johannesburg. She and her husband have three daughters. Her painting  African Proverb VI (Iron Rod), shown above, and others below display that marriage between the gospel and her native land.

 

Lisa Marie Crosby grew up in Salt Lake City and received a BFA in Studio Art from BYU. She lives in Utah with her husband and three children. She says of her working style, “In my studio, I work on a minimum of three paintings at once. Each piece serves as a catalyst for another as I literally stamp various panels together so they can connect and become changed. As I move between paintings, I draw, drip, layer, write, delete, and mix oil painting mediums.”

How did you develop your unique style? I would say that my style of painting is constantly emerging and evolving. I try to paint according to what feels authentic and real to me, as well as what inspires me. My education highly influenced the way that I paint, as well as contemporary artists I admire.

You have said, ‘Painting is where I sort through reality and experience’. This means that as I paint, I use memory to access experiences and locations. As I progress through a painting, I go back and forth between those memories and my current situation or belief. My work comes about through this personal meditation and my own interpretation of the world.

Which Mormon painters do you find most interesting right now? The LDS artists that I find most interesting right now are the ones I know. I love seeing how their lives work and they interact with others while creating art. I like how Andrew Ballstaedt paints and draws, and he has been a mentor to me throughout my career. I had the chance to be a studio hand with Brian Kershisnik when I was beginning my career, and I found his way of creating and his commitment to making art very inspiring. Ashley Mae Hoiland’s approach to making art and using it as a catalyst to connect to others is something that also really resonates with me.

Visit Lisa Marie Crosby’s website.

Follow Lisa Marie Crosby on Instagram.

Lane Twitchell is an incredibly accomplished contemporary visual artist with a long list of awards, exhibitions, and public and private commissions. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and is a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and received an MFA from the same. He is well versed in oils, acrylics, enamels, and urethanes and produced a portfolio of museum quality paintings over the course of his career. However, he is perhaps most known for his cut paper and acrylic polymers on plexi panel.

Cherie K. Woodworth wrote, “What Twitchell does is reinterpret the Western landscape— landscape as kaleidoscope, as a quilt made of paper, as a wide open world refracted in a giant, man-made snowflake. It is the landscape and the heart of the West—its natural grandeur, its history, its modern-day suburbs. Twitchell’s landscape is a labyrinthine desert rose blossoming in the midst of Manhattan.”

When I first approached Twitchell late last year for a profile I was told, politely, to get lost. When the website was up and running I reached out again and he graciously agreed to a profile. Part of his resistance stems from his mixed feelings about the Mormon church. Twitchell was born and raised in Utah in a Mormon home, but has since left the church with legion of opinions and feelings about his Mormon heritage, the Church, and the relationship between art and the Church. Twitchell is talented and opinionated and outspoken with a long list of articles and blog posts online. We plan to look again at his art in the coming months.

Images courtesy Lane Twitchell (including a picture of a young Twitchell seated at Ezra Taft Benson’s desk).

Visit Lane Twitchell’s website.

Whereas I Was Blind, Now I See by Tyson Snow (above).

The Church History Museum on Temple Square is closed for almost a year for extensive renovations, but they are virtually exhibiting the Miracles of Christ. The microsite includes pieces from their collection and submissions for the triennial International Art Competition.

Christ Healing a Man Blind from Birth by Brian Kershisnik (below).

They Were All Filled by Walter Rane (below).

Raising the Daughter of Jairus by Wilson Ong (below).