Self Portrait

HENRY TAYLOR (B. 1958)

Self Portrait

signed, inscribed and dated on the reverse 'Henry Taylor ME HENRY 2019' (on the reverse)

acrylic on canvas

20 1/8 x 16 inches (51.1 x 40.6 cm)

Painted in 2019.

PROVENANCE:

Blum & Poe, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner

EXHIBITED:

New York, Blum & Poe, Henry Taylor: NIECE COUSIN KIN LOOK HOW LONG IT'S BEEN, 24 September-2 November, 2019.

NOTES:

Born in 1958 in Ventura, California, Henry Taylor lives and works in Los Angeles. A leading figure in contemporary figurative painting, Taylor is celebrated for his raw, empathetic portraits that chronicle the people and social conditions that shape American life. Taylor worked at Camarillo State Hospital for 10 years until 1997 and simultaneously received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1995. Over the past three decades, Taylor has developed a body of work that blurs the line between personal memory and public history, infusing scenes of everyday experience with political, emotional, and psychological depth. His work has been exhibited internationally, with major presentations at MoMA PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Venice Biennale, and it is now recognized as an essential voice in the ongoing story of American portraiture. Henry Taylor is represented globally by Hauser & Wirth.

Taylor’s portraits are defined by their immediacy and emotional candor. Working quickly and intuitively, he captures likeness not through precision but through presence and his figures emerge from loose, expressive brushwork that holds a deep sense of empathy. Whether painting family members, friends, or icons of Black history, Taylor imbues each subject with equal dignity and humanity. His compositions often appear disarmingly simple, yet beneath lies a profound engagement with the social and spiritual realities of contemporary life. By merging the personal and political, Taylor’s work reclaims portraiture as a site of intimacy and truth.

Self Portrait, painted in 2019, embodies the unvarnished honesty that has become Taylor’s hallmark. Against a stark white background, the artist depicts himself with restrained simplicity–a few black lines outline the shoulders of his shirt, while asymmetrical eyes anchor the face in direct, searching intensity. The figure seems to hover between assertion and vulnerability, stripped of artifice or embellishment. In this austere image, Taylor turns his gaze inward, presenting himself with the same clarity and compassion he extends to others. The painting’s rawness with its uneven lines and sparse composition speaks to the artist’s willingness to reveal the imperfections of selfhood, both personal and universal. Self Portrait stands as a quiet yet powerful meditation on identity and introspection, a work that captures the essence of Taylor’s practice of painting as an act of seeing, understanding, and bearing witness to a particular moment.