Brooklyn-based artist Alison Elizabeth Taylor is well-known for reinvigorating the Renaissance craft of marquetry, and more recently for combining paint and wood inlay to create a new perspective in painting. Taylor explains, “What interests me is a new type of surface created by the contrast of the textural qualities of the wood and the depth afforded by the paint. I found this tension was just what I needed to convey the otherworldly feeling I encountered in real life when I observed how nature adapts and mutates to accommodate encounters with the ever-encroaching urban environment.” Taylor’s meditations on the relationship between humanity and nature take place amongst the urban grit. By working in the medium of marquetry, typically associated with wealth and power, to portray dystopian scenes of everyday life, Taylor creates tension between the luxurious connotations of the material and a certain abjectness in subject matter. “A viewer can find dual associations with the opulence of Louis XIV and the squalor of wood laminate living.  The splendor of the shellacked wood is an invitation to look at subjects the viewer might otherwise ignore.”

Raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Alison Elizabeth Taylor received her M.F.A. from Columbia University, Graduate School of the Arts in 2005. Her work has recently been purchased by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and is included in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which is currently on view in the exhibition Unfolding Tales: Selection from the Collection (2013). Upcoming in February 2014, Taylor’s work will be included in the First International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias, in Colombia. In June 2015, Taylor will mount a solo exhibition engaging with the architecture and historical furniture at the Musée Historique, Chateau de Nyon, Lake of Geneva, CH.

Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery.

Click here to read our interview with Alison Elizabeth Taylor on "harnessing the power of beauty."