When you spot a piece of art that is able to transmit immediate, poignant expressiveness, you can’t help but halt before it in an attempt to discern its inner narrative.

Earlier this year, I had my first chance Taylor Whites work with my own eyes, when she was a part of the outdoor exhibition, Brick Wall, at Juddy Roller. Having only glimpsed her works online previously, what I saw with my own eyes (as is usually the way), easily eclipsed what I had previously seen on the monitors illumination.

Originally hailing from the US, and having made her way down to Oz via a series of journeys, encompassed Scandinavia and other far flung nations, Taylor has now well and truly made Melbourne home. Gaining the eye of the Just Another Agency team through a chance encounter, we are now getting a chance to see this incredible emerging talent at her upcoming show, Base Nature. Focusing on the sense of self and the turmoil our youthful years of self discovery, Base Nature will be the first outing here in Australia from an artist that we believe is a highly developed talent.

With her studio base at the afore mentioned Juddy Roller, a haven for a whole slew of creatives in Fitzroy, Taylor has been hard at work over the past few months. Painting, thinking and divulging her inner thoughts via her canvases,  the story she has to tell within Base Nature is enveloping.

Taylor spared some precious time away from her work in the lead up to this Thursdays show to sate some of our curiosity – hers is art that speaks a woven tale …

When did you first realise that you had a knack for art, and was heading down the creative path something you always wanted to do?

I’ve literally spent my entire life drawing. From about the age of 2 onward I produced volumes of artwork; repetitive renditions of classic cartoon characters, visual manifestations of the incessant chatter that came out of my mouth as I scribbled my way through reams of my father’s office paper.

Looking through some of these drawings later, it appeared I would literally illustrate complex narratives with Bosch-like symbolism and detail, though the subject matter was admittedly far more juvenile – any emotion I felt was translated into a drawing.

I developed a curious interest in sex at a very young age, and at that point my illustrations got me into a heap of trouble. Still, in not one year of grade school did I have a teacher who didn’t call out, “don’t forget me when you’re famous!” The career path was never a question.

You only moved down to Australia a year or two ago, most recently we believe from Norway – how has your stay been down here and what have been some of the more interesting experiences you’ve has here so far? How different have you found the art scene down here as opposed to other places you have resided?

Australia has been just otherworldly. Everything is exciting. I still freak out when I look up and see a colorful parrot, and I find your possums amazing. I recently traveled to Western Australia and drove south; that was an experience that changed my whole perception of life. I was slain by the beauty of it.

Living in Norway was a tremendously valuable experience, but it bred in me a period of deep emotional and creative frustration. Beautiful and magnificent in its own right, there isn’t much going on there creatively, and the culture is much more emotionally conservative so it is not very generous to the non-Norwegian.

By contrast, the atmosphere in Australia is vibrant; I was struck by the amount of creative stimulation, friendliness and respect that could be found in the artistic communities down here. There’s always something going on, always a challenge to be met, and plenty of other creative minds to inspire and to be inspired. It’s a beautiful place, and a blessing to be a part of it while I am able.

I would love to visit Norway again someday with the mind I have now, to see it with new eyes … but it’s not a place I would call home.

So we read a little bit somewhere about a wish to revive the traveling American carnival – we have to say, we have a particular interest in late 19th and early 20th century traveling carnivals ourselves – where does your affinity for them come from, and, can you tell us a bit about them? Does this love eventual play into your work at all?

Well, that was originally a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment, but I do have a particular affinity for the nostalgia of circus sideshows, dime museums and other politically incorrect entertainments of bygone eras. It ties in closely with a fascination with turn of the century science and medicine, medical anomalies, and social history, and the lifestyle that was necessitated by that period of time.

I’m captivated by the hardened souls found in the photography of Lewis Hine, Ben Shahn, Arthur Rothstein, Dorthea Lange. The era was about survival, and that energy has been significantly absorbed into the work I do.

You signed up with Just Another Agency not too long ago, tell us a bit more about working with the girls and how you got involved with them.

I nearly killed Toby with a chilli-coated burrito during a brief and misbegotten stint as a server at the Vegie Bar – a job I’d taken up just when I’d first arrived, before I knew where to look for artist work.

The Agency came recommended to me through a friend, and when I arrived months later on their doorstep they couldn’t resist taking me on. They insist it was the quality of my portfolio that got me hired, but I’ll go to my grave maintaining it was the burrito.

The title of your show “Base Nature” that you have coming up next week seems, on the face of it, fairly self explanatory – but, we don’t like to make assumptions – can you delve into the thematic ideas behind the exhibition and the subject matter that it deals with?

Base Nature is the consummate thesis of about year’s worth of spiritual and psychological contemplation. It addresses the nature of perception, identity and ego, and the precarious platform upon which we build the notion of the ‘self.’ As we grow we’re taught to assign characteristics to things and take them for granted as autonomous and enduring.

We are taught what ‘is.’ In adolescence we undergo turmoil in the desperate quest to find out who we ‘are,’ and in the end develop great attachment to the establishment of that identity. We situate ourselves at the center of our world and filter all stimuli through the ‘I,’ and every emotional response – be it positive or negative – is the result of a series of attractions and aversions to things which respectively galvanize or threaten our sense of self, our reality. We experience the self through its vulnerability and by continuously focusing our energy on ‘me’ we are trying to hold onto, or avoid, that which is constantly changing and impossible to control. The result is confusion, anger and suffering, inflicted upon ourselves and on others. I explore that notion in this work; the ‘I’ as the locus of consciousness, and the beasts that are born from the discord between perception and reality.

There’s often an indirect suggestiveness within your work, adult themes juxtaposed with childhood imagery amongst it – can you elucidate us on these motifs and how they relate to your art?

The child is something to whom everyone can relate; everyone was one. It is humanity in its purest form, before the development of the Great Hindrance that is the mind. Adults are differentiated, self-realized and self-absorbed; difficult to relate to because they often won’t allow it. Children are pure energy. That energy exists in everyone, but few acknowledge it in adulthood. The little boy in me exists so prominently, and while it often hides in everyday life by unfortunate necessity, it resonates across my canvas. Being an adult with all the trappings of the adult mind, I tend to communicate those complex themes through what appears to be my spirit animal – the pre-adolescent male.

Someday, through further exploration, the little girl may surface, but for now this appears to be how it is.

We do notice that within your portraits, that the eyes are either missing, subdued or vaguely hinted at – often its said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but those windows are mostly shuttered in your work … there’s a question here that begs asking, but perhaps it’s one you yourself could state?

There’s truth to the notion that eyes are a window into the soul, but sometimes the eyes say too much. I find sometimes the question is a lot more exciting than the answer. I find that by leaving gaps in the expressions of the face I allow the viewer to insert their own consciousness into the subject, thus finding it a more uniquely relatable experience for them. I don’t always avoid eyes, but I’m very choosy about when and in what context it’s appropriate to freeze the character’s emotional condition to a point in time. Leaving it open, it’s like looking into a crystal ball.

Always changing.

How have you found the process of working on the show, as, we believe, this is one I your first major exhibitions how have you found being chained to an easel the last few weeks and how has it helped push your work forward?

It’s my ideal situation, doing a heavy amount of work in a short time. I’m able to funnel my consciousness into one project and completely focus on it, rather than allowing a longer time frame for the distractions of life to inject themselves into my workflow. The more I paint, the better the ideas become, and the more efficient. I’m lucky to be stable enough at the moment – it may not always be this way – that I can support myself solely on my art and on my dwindling savings account, and as such I’m able to cast aside life’s distractions and responsibilities and just bury myself in the studio. I surface for food and social interaction, and I’m also lucky to have close friends who are supportive, interested and involved in what I’m doing, and don’t go into total isolation.

I go to a boxing gym on Sunday mornings – these things keep me grounded and healthy, enabling me to maintain a high standard of work.

What will you be doing after you’ve finished up the show? Do you have any concrete plans for what it want to do in the near future? What unrealised projects are still awaiting for you to pursue in the future?

After I’ve finished this show I’ll take a few days off to frolic and then I hope to dive right back in… I’m uncertain what projects lie ahead, but there are a few possibilities. I hope that the exposure generated from this show will yield more work opportunities, be it individually or through collaboration. The bigger the challenge, the better. If allowed, I’ll stay in the country and do these things here; if not, I’ll move on … back to the States, perhaps, but I feel I’ll always be somehow affiliated with Australia.

Anyway, there is still so much of the world left to be covered, and so much art to be made upon it.

Check out Taylor Whites show, Base Nature, as well as her website for more information.