The art of the chance encounter
Published 3:00 pm Monday, August 30, 2004
Artists and life partners Tracy Lang and Mark Taylor offer two versions of a single vision.
Sharing the same subject matter means that the work is often complementary, with different views of the same landscape or model generated as the pair paint landscapes side by side, or work from the model in the new Winslow studio they open next weekend.
But the sensibilities are distinct and the mediums are different. Where Taylor – who had to shake free of training as a technical drafter – does loose, gestural paintings on canvas, Lang, known for oversize figurative woodcuts, shows 11-by-30-inch watercolors featuring semi-abstract nudes.
“I’ve got a lot of ‘boy images,’” Lang said. “We closed our Seattle gallery four years ago and we’ve been producing work at the same rate since, so we’ve got dense piles we haven’t showed anyone.”
Both artists are prolific and the two share a similar aesthetic, tending toward the gestural and away from the realistic rendering, whether the work is landscape or derived from the figure.
“We go on location to paint the landscape,” Taylor said. “We never work from photographs. It’s about immediacy, about seeing.”
Studio visitors will see the whole of the artists’ work, rather than the carefully selected pieces that make up the typical gallery exhibit. Works will be arrayed so that visitors can see progression in style and media that runs the gamut of watercolor, acrylics, oils and woodcut prints.
“The gallery tends to censor a lot of work, and the artist censors the work before it even gets into the gallery,” Lang said. “So at the studio you get to see a broad cross-section of work you’d never get to see in the gallery.”
Lang and Taylor first joined forces in Seattle, where the two were part of an art scene loosely organized around the University of Washington.
Northwest native Taylor had graduated from Evergreen State College, although he says it took him “about 20 years” to get the diploma.
Lang had moved to Seattle from the Oregon coast towns where her father was a logger and fell in with a group of Seattle artists.
“We met about 15 years ago,” she said. “He swears we met at the Pike Place Market, and I swear we met at an alleyway coffee shop in the University District.
“But either way, we spied each other and hooked up immediately and started building a boat.”
Lang and Taylor moved onto their craft, moored off Bainbridge, about five years ago. This year, they finished the boat and moved out to the harbor.
“Yeah, we’re ‘liveaboards,’” Taylor said, “but we always come in to pump out.”
Shared studio space isn’t for everyone, especially when the artists are as gregarious as Lang and Taylor. Artists who need to “shut themselves in the studio to control everything” tend to shy away.
Lang and Taylor like interaction in the workspace so much, in fact, that they still sometimes join a group of artists in Seattle who meet to draw every Tuesday night.
“People have a hard time working with us because it’s raucous,” Taylor said, “It’s chatty.”
In their private studio on the island, the atmosphere is freewheeling, as well.
The duo say there are no rules about what each can say to the other. Any subject is fair game, and the banter even includes pointed criticisms about each other’s work, an unusually open approach to giving feedback.
“We’re not egocentric, we’re not self-protective,” Lang said.
“And, we make so much work if we fail at one (artwork) there’s always the next one.”
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Join Mark Taylor and Tracy Lang as they celebrate their new studio with an exhibition and open house, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Aug. 27-29 at 219 Madison Ave. South (next to Eagle Harbor Congregational Church). Call 855-9458 for more information.
