Caleb Taylor
Caleb Taylor was an Artist-in-Residence at Prairieside Outpost during two visits, one in the early spring and one in the fall of 2019. Caleb attended the residency with his family. In the time between his 2-part residency, his son turned from 2 to 3 years old, and his daughter’s age almost tripled, from 3 months to 11 months old.
Having time to contemplate the environment between visits affected Caleb’s work during his residency, especially with the contrast of seasons of late spring and early fall. His work culminates in an exhibition in the Fall of 2020 at Haw Contemporary in Kansas City.
Gauging Contrast
My son Bridger and I took a weekend walk through town and we spoke about the day, shared our observations, and overheard conversations between locals. Matfield Green felt familiar, having grown up in rural northwest Missouri surrounded by towns similar in size, pace, and existence. But the rolling landscape distinguishes it from others I have known. We took our time, stopping periodically in the middle of the road for a rest and to draw out our time together. We returned to the studio to paint and assemble puzzles while listening to an older Strokes album on repeat.
Our time at Prairieside Cottage and Outpost created moments of comparison during a residency divided between two opposing seasons: early spring and late fall. My family and I observed Matfield Green in sub-zero temperatures with snow-covered ground and in moderate November chill with flowing brown fields. These different forces created new influences in my perception of space, color, and light, informing a series of small paintings that carried a reoccurring lexicon of structural geometry and regional architectural forms. The first evening, the cottage study served as a drawing studio for us all, and the library’s books on A-frame architecture, artist studios, geological formations and interior design magazines provided unexpected influence. All the while, the small neighborhood outbuildings, studio, and carport called my attention to a regional way of building structures that populated the land; forms dictated by past and current functions (chicken coups, well houses, etc.). I began looking at this architecture as facades, exhibition venues, and profiles in space.
I arrived to the Prairieside Cottage and Outpost interested in shifting my palette based on the colors and observations of the surrounding landscape. I found myself mixing mottled grays, ochres, and rusty hues taken from studio views of the changing autumn spectrum. And these subtleties made the saturations of reds and pinks more commanding. Working in dialogue with the local architecture helped me build context in the work I made in residence. The carport adjacent to the Cottage featured distinct segmented siding that I saw early on as a venue and as an extension to motifs I was using in the studio: grids, leaning parallelograms, and linear networks.
Our last day in residence culminated in an outdoor exhibition of works shown on the exterior of the out outbuilding, presented in dialogue with the moving light and surrounding palette. Moving the work outside the studio created a subtle intervention into my previous feelings of familiarity with Matfield Green. Importantly, it offered my family a brief moment to exist together, outside and amongst the prairie.
