with paint & brush. This thinking-back exercise not only
had surprising results but exposed some hurtful feelings,
ones that I had hoped and thought I had buried and had
long forgotten about. I'll explain......I was six years old when I created a 'deliberate' conceptual
painting. My junior school teacher (who was a creative
herself) asked a few in the class to paint something from
a story book she had read to us. It was the [true] story
of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, better known in the UK
as Scott of the Antarctic. He was a British hero who had
perished bravely in Antarctica in 1912. They were dejected
returning to base camp, having been beaten as the 'First
Men to reach the South Pole' by Ronald Amundsen and his
team of explorers.
If you know the whole story then you will appreciate the
drama and adventure that a boy, like me at the time, would
have seen in it. So, that was my concept – snow, ice and
men – the idea for the painting, you could say.In my meditative state I relived the passion and excitement
of recreating a scene from this epic story the teacher
had read to us. I remembered, in graphic detail, painting
furiously and without thought as to what I was actually
doing. I recalled how all my energy was directed, not by
my brain, but by my mind. A mind free from terra firma
restraints. A mind floating in a three dimensional visual
inside my head, a visual that was desperate to get out. The
mind of a child, one that knew nothing about Art theory,
Art styles or anything whatsoever connected with culture
and visual art.Denis Taylor At 6 Yearrs Old
Captain Oates dressed for snow-shovelling at the
expedition stables in August 1911