Artist
Pace Taylor
Born 1992, lives and works in Portland, Oregon
Pace Taylor works in soft pastel and pencil on paper, drawn to the medium's saturated, opaque pigment and to its fragility. Their figures are elegant and elongated, rendered in high-key oranges and magentas, with sinuous pencil contours that pick out eyes and lips, often caught in sidelong glances in domestic interiors and nightclubs. The work is preoccupied with intimacy and who we choose to build it with, and with how closeness and isolation can exist in the same moment, seen through a queer lens. Taylor works intuitively and leaves room for accident. Recent work draws on Americana, from cowboy imagery and truck stops to cigarette packs and beer bottles, using unreliable lighting and skewed space to look at belonging, desire and place.
