Henry Taylor: B Side

Taylor is the youngest of eight children in a large extended family whose members—from his mother, father, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins to his own three children—appear frequently in his work. Taylor's parents moved from the East Texas cotton town of Naples to Oxnard, California, in 1944, making them among the millions of Black Americans who left the segregated South in search of greater economic opportunities and social freedoms during the post-World War II phase of the Great Migration. Their experiences, and the stories he heard from them growing up, instilled in Taylor a sensitivity to the cultural and political currents affecting Black Americans. As with his other works, Taylor paints his family from memory, in-person sittings, and snapshots.