Art N' About

Author: LAUREN SMITH

The Internet is fast becoming as important of a tool to artists as a paintbrush. Undeniably, it is changing the way artists do business. Dealing with this side of things, though most right-brained visual artists despise the task, is absolutely necessary if one wants to get ahead in this consumer-crazed world. The Internet is actually making all that necessary babble much easier for visual artists who could previously only expose their work on a small-scale, at a local gallery, for example.

There are so many amateur artists' sites just in Vermont that it would take days to browse through them all. Google "Vermont artists" and you get a over 15 million results. Everything from pottery studios in the backwoods of the state to fantasy artists to pet portraiture is represented. Most sites offer several examples of the artist's work plus a short bio and contact information for buyers. Some of the sites are apparently homemade endeavors and some were obviously created with the help of professionals.

However, why stop at Vermont? Through the miracle of the Google image search, you can view images of sculpture by a young sculptor in some remote part of Russia or paintings by an 83-year-old man in Tulsa, Okla. For the first time ever, artists are connected to a community of art collectors, dealers, museum curators and fellow artists which inevitably leads to more exposure of an artist's work and a greater chance of "getting ahead" in the fiercely competitive world of art.

I decided to conduct my own search to find an artist who particularly inspired me and I found Gareth Taylor. According to his entry in the undergroundvibez.co.uk web site, he's a taxi driver in Aberdeen, a modestly sized city in Scotland. He began working as an artist by creating posters for the underground music scene in Aberdeen. Taylor currently attends Aberdeen College part-time to study oil painting and drives his taxi the rest of the time.

His oil or acrylic paintings are roughly painted portraits of surreal images. Using bright colors and high contrast, he captures people and situations he encounters driving his taxi or images evoked by song lyrics. Most images depict comically tragic situations, such as his painting entitled "You're So Clever," a straightforward portrait of a desperate-looking older man and his very young, very busty girlfriend sucking on a lollipop. Taylor's work is wonderfully original and insightful, most likely from the observations he makes on the people who enter his taxi. He just had his first exhibition at Aberdeen's Belmont Picturehouse Café Bar in February.

The moral of this column is this: there is so much art out there, particularly on the Internet that is just waiting to inspire you. Whether you're interested in buying some cool (often inexpensive) art to hang on your wall or you're an artist with a creativity deficiency who is looking for something to stimulate your creative muscle, the Web has a plethora of original artwork from every corner of the globe.

See Gareth Taylor's work at http://garethtaylor.undergroundvibez.co.uk/.