When Fan Ogilvie was selected to show her artwork at the West Tisbury library, she invited Paige Taylor to share the space with her. Ogilvie, the former West Tisbury poet laureate, wanted to give her former poetry student a chance to demonstrate her talents in a different discipline. “I saw her work online, and I was impressed,” Ogilvie says.
Although their styles and their choice of medium are very different, both women have had to overcome adversity to pursue their creative outlets. Ogilvie had an operation on her shoulder in 2021 that left her right arm and hand paralyzed for a year. Although she could continue writing, visual art became all but impossible. When she started to recover, Ogilvie found that her still limited mobility left her unable to do precision work, so she started creating large color field paintings.
Taylor has had to overcome the difficulties presented growing up as a person with cerebral palsy. She says she often felt as though creating art was out of reach — something that she could only admire, but never do herself. “Over time, though, as technology became more advanced, I figured out ways to make the artistic visions in my head a reality,” she says. “Now in my mid-20s, I’ve been very autodidactic and individualistic in my approach to making artwork, using innovative techniques via computer software to create avant-garde modern art. I consider my artwork to be reflective of my personal sense of fashion style. I want my art to convey themes of feminine beauty, power, and a touch of both chaos and grace.”
Taylor is showing three of her colorful, digitally manipulated photos — abstract images full of energy and emotion.
The young artist, who was raised on Martha’s Vineyard but currently lives in Boston, expressed her thoughts in a recent email.
What inspires you?
I feel like I’m inspired by a lot of different things, whether it’s an emotion or thought I keep having, a song that I hear, or clothing I see. My inspiration is derived from things I feel and experience, translated into a different, more ambiguous form of beauty. I think abstract art is open to more than one interpretation, and a viewer might see something different in it than what I had in mind when I created it. And I think that’s a big difference from what realistic art is: It’s supposed to capture exactly what the artist was originally inspired by. In contrast, abstract art has an inspiration, but it’s more enigmatic, so people see different things when looking at it. I think that’s beautiful.
How long have you been making art? What prompted you to start?
I’ve been making art off and on since my early to mid-teens. A lot of cool online photo editing websites started to become popular back then, and I loved that you could make photos look so interesting, even if you weren’t a professional photographer. I developed an interest in photography from looking at this beautifully overedited photography. I loved that photos could look more like paintings with the magic of technology. So because of this growing interest, I ended up taking photography and graphic design classes with two of the art teachers at the high school [Chris Baer and Paul Brisette], which were some of my favorite classes in school. They taught us how to edit photos, and as I got more competent at photo editing, I started experimenting with unconventional techniques, playing with color, and finding ways to mess photos up, making them look wrong to make them look beautiful. For a few years, my interest in art waned, but then when the pandemic hit in 2020, I had a lot of free time on my hands, and making art again became a remedy for my boredom, and gave me a sense of daily fulfillment.
What other creative outlets have you explored?
I’ve always considered myself to be a very artistic, creative person. I think that’s one of the core facets of my personality. I’ve loved dancing, singing, and writing ever since I was little. In middle school, I was part of the school choir at the West Tisbury School, and did two performances in the Built on Stilts Dance Festival in my early teens. In terms of writing, my twin sister Claudia (who is also a talented artist, writer, and musician) and I won Promising Young Poet awards in 2012 (which were actually given to us by Fan Ogilvie). I have also had an interest in fashion, and I take great joy in putting together cool outfits to wear. I think my interest in fashion was a prelude to my interest in visual art. I think both fashion and visual art involve having an innate sense of what looks like a beautiful combination of things to create an overall vision. Fashion was my form of visual art before I learned how to make art.
How have your physical challenges affected your work?
I feel like the reason I started making visual art later than I started making poetic and vocal art was because of my fine motor issues related to my CP. I couldn’t draw very precisely using pen and paper, so I didn’t start making art until technology became more advanced and I could have the help of a computer to turn the artwork I had in my head into a reality. As a disabled person and a divergent thinker in general, I’ve had to come up with innovative, novel ways of doing things, including things related to artistic work. Having to diverge from the standard, typical way has made my artwork look unusual and modern.
What do you love about the Island, and what inspires you about Martha’s Vineyard?
I think being raised on the Island was great because there are so many open-minded, quirky, creative people there. It’s such a tight-knit community of artists, poets, and musicians. Not to mention, the high school’s art department was amazing. So many kids got into making such beautiful art there, and I think that’s wonderful.
“Taking Shape in S PA C E,” featuring work by Fan Ogilvie and Paige Taylor, is at the West Tisbury library through the month of March.
