Howard Taylor

Howard Taylor was a Victorian-born painter, potter and art educator who became one of Perth's leading artists of the twentieth century. He served in the Royal Australian Air Force during the Second World War and spent five years as a prisoner-of-war in Europe before he was released in 1945. After briefly returning to Australia, Taylor moved to the United Kingdom, studying painting under Bernard Fleetwood-Walker at the Birmingham School of Art. He returned to Australia in 1949, settling in Perth. From 1951, Taylor began teaching at Perth Technical College, where he taught until 1965. He later taught at the School of Architecture and Planning, Western Australian Institute of Technology (1965-69) and was made Artist-in-Residence at the same institution in 1977. His reputation as an artist grew through the 1950s as he created tempera works and sculptures towards the end of the decade. 

Taylor held his first major solo exhibition in 1960 and through the 1960s and 1970s focused predominantly on sculpture, including his first public commissions, including for Curtin University of Technology and the AMP building, both in Perth. From the mid-1970s into the 1980s, Taylor turned back to painting and pastel works on paper, but continued to receive sculptural commissions, including Compass and Perspective that stands in the Parliament House sculpture garden, Canberra.  In 1989, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia, and in 1993 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Australia. In 2000, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award and a Citizen of the Year Award from the Western Australian Government.