Taylor Carpenter

Bio

Taylor Carpenter is a multi-media artist based in Kelowna, B.C. Her practice explores the
dialogue that emerges through juxtaposing detailed rendering and quick, gestural mark-making.
Carpenter spent much of her childhood in a mundane suburban home in Edmonton, Alberta.
Across from the family dinner table hung a painting by Kim Norlin, a small wooden cabin sitting
across a calm lake, with a vast forest framing the home. Upon closer inspection, she discovered
tiny, everyday moments: rabbits bouncing through the grass, deer hiding behind distant trees,
and owls perched in the branches. Every meal, she would spend time with that painting,
surprising herself with what she could find. This interaction has subconsciously followed her
throughout her artistic practice. Her goal is to persuade viewers to spend time with her work,
discovering precious moments crowded among abstract gestural marks and intense graphic
elements.
Carpenter begins her process with mark-making, drawing inspiration from modernists such as
Wassily Kandinsky, studying how they both command and intuitively allow gestures to guide
their art. She creates countless sheets of pure gestural abstraction, which she then brings into
the contemporary world through digital distortion. Using the Lasso tool in Photoshop, she
embraces the aggressive, often frustrating moments that emerge through this process. Her goal
is not to create balanced compositions, but to search for and collect moments that arise
organically, synthesizing her findings into a singular collage. She acknowledges the work of
early collage artists such as Pablo Picasso, who pioneered the medium yet were confined by its
materiality. Technology has allowed Carpenter to invite collage into the contemporary space,
celebrating gestures unique to digital distortion.
Carpenter invites viewers to immerse themselves in her work, to discover the small, intimate
moments that are often drowned out by her aggressive compositions.