Why, What For?

More Works By Noreen Taylor Oil On Canvas 2023
48 × 40 in 121.92 × 101.6 cm
$5,000

About Why, What For?

Noreen Taylor’s expressive abstract paintings are often inspired by the beauty of nature that surrounds us but the Canadian artist is also moved by world events.

This piece—rainbow-coloured words against a midnight blue backdrop bordered in deep red came to mind after reading a recent history on the Russian Revolution. Following its failure, with Stalin in power, ardent followers of the revolution were imprisoned. Many of them wrote on the walls of their cells, “Why, What for?” As the world recently emerged from the confines forced upon us by the pandemic, Taylor felt many of us were asking the same questions.

“Although not prisoners, with few places to go, it was evident that people were asking themselves questions about what they had expected from life and questioning too, about what they were actually getting in life. The pandemic became a time of reckoning, in which one’s hopes and dreams for the future were questioned and a time when no easy answers could be found.” Noreen Taylor

Born in 1947 and raised in Toronto, Noreen Taylor acquired both her B.Ed. and a M.A. in Art History at the University of Toronto. Taylor is a highly respected businesswoman, visual arts teacher and philanthropist who has helped shape art policy in the Toronto area. She has been a board member of several key arts organizations including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Gardiner Museum. Taylor chaired the McMichael Canadian Collection of Canadian Art and was the founding Artistic Director for the Claude Watson School for the Arts. Since the 1970’s she has exhibited in numerous solo, and group shows in Canada and the U.S. She has also contributed illustrations to several publications.