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Artist Database
TAYLOR, Roberta Jane
- Born
- Amherst, Nova Scotia, 1905
- Died
- Amherst, Nova Scotia, 1990
- Biography synopsis
- Roberta Taylor's interest in art began in 1913, when she saw Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Stairway #2, and a number of Picassos while visiting New York. After completing high school, Taylor enrolled at Mount Allison Ladies’ College in Sackville, New Brunswick. For the next three years she studied for a Diploma in Fine Arts under instructors including Elizabeth McLeod and Christian Harris McKiel. After graduating in 1925, she moved to New York where she worked for fifteen years. In 1939 she entered New York World’s Fair poster contest and her work was chosen to be part of a travelling exhibition. Four of her drawings were published in "The New Yorker." While in New York she also attended art schools and worked as a graphic designer for Dennison’s. In 1940 she moved back to Nova Scotia and worked throughout World War II as a draftswoman – designing airplane parts – at the Canada Car and Foundry in Amherst. After the war she taught art for two years at Kings Hall, a private school for girls in Compton, Quebec. She returned to Amherst in 1948 where she continued to paint, taught art in local schools, exhibited and continued her study of art. (Special thanks to Laurie Glenn Norris for researching this artist).
- Media used
- Acrylics
- Oil painting
- Pen and Ink
- Watercolour
- Education
- Mount Allison Ladies' College, Sackville, NB
- New York School of Fine and Applied Arts
- Art Students' League, New York
- Roerich Museum School, New York
- Memberships
- Maritime Art Association, 1964-1972
- Amherst Art Association
- Sackville Art Association
- File & Archive locations
- Cumberland County Museum and Archives, NS
- National Gallery of Canada, ON - Library and Archives
- Canadian Women Artists History Initiative Documentation Centre, QC
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
Writings about- Cumberland County Museum; Owens Art Gallery. Roberta Taylor: A Retrospective (1905-1990) Amherst, Nova Scotia: Cumberland County Museum, 1991
- Glenn, Laurie. "Roberta Taylor." Sackville Art Association: The First Sixty Years Sackville, New Brunswick: publisher unknown, 1995
- Glenn, Laurie. "Sketch of an Artist: An Introduction to the Life and Work of Roberta Jane Taylor." Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal 20.1 (1995): 125-137
- Hallee, Shirley. "Roberta Taylor: A Retrospective (1905-1990)." Arts Atlantic 42 (Winter 1992): 4-5
- Hashey, Mary W., ed. Maritime Artists Vol. 1 Fredericton: Maritime Art Association, 1967
