Laura Taylor is of Brazilian/American heritage and was raised primarily in Canada with frequent intervals spent in Sao Paulo, Brazil. For the last twelve years she has lived in New York City. Her art education has been somewhat unconventional. After completing two years at The Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Canada (1979-81) she moved to Quebec, taking a year off school to live on a remote lake in northern Quebec painting, reading the classics and teaching herself French. She attended the Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres (1982) for another year, and completed her formal studies at the New York Studio School in New York City in 1984. Taylor has been granted residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Dorland Artist Colony in California, and internationally, Treffpunkt Kunst, in Austria. She was a resident at The Montana Artist's Refuge from November 2003 through July of 2004 during which time she conducted technique workshops locally and exhibited her work in various venues in Montana. She was a member of The Painting Center in New York City from 1997 until early 2005 during which time she acted as curator for shows of artists from across the United States and organized international exchange exhibits between Painting Center artists with both Ireland and Austria. She has shown her work extensively in this country, including three solo shows in New York, New York, shows in Providence, Rhode Island, Butte, Montana, Narrowsburg, New York. Taylor's work comes out of the Romanticist tradition of the late eighteenth century. Her works shares an affinity with those artists who were working from a state of disillusionment with their world. Her recent paintings are large landscapes that portray vast spaces where the presence of human beings is diminutive or entirely non-existent. Some employ a Turneresque light and treatment of paint while others more graphic renditions of vast spaces. In all nature is perhaps not offering the solace and escape the viewer might be seeking.