photo: Kevin Wilson
“
It is the sheer visual presence of my subjects that fascinates me—not just the way they are, but the way they seem to be. This has necessarily meant working slowly from life, one canvas at a time.
On the 21st July 2026 I shall be in conversation at the Design Museum with fellow painter and Wes Anderson collaborator Sandro Kopp chaired by DM curators Johanna Agerman Ross and Lucia Savi.
Design Museum website
This is an unmissable event for multidisciplinary artists, film enthusiasts, students, professionals and Wes Anderson fans.
‘Enter the richly detailed universe of director Wes Anderson through a discussion on the integral role of art in his films. Chaired by Chief Curator Johanna Agerman Ross, this panel brings together artists Sandro Kopp and Michael Taylor, both contributors to Anderson’s distinctive visual worlds.
The conversation will feature an introduction by Head of Curatorial Lucia Savi and will explore how their artistic practices intersect with film-making, examining the creation and placement of artworks within cinematic narratives and how these pieces contribute to atmosphere, storytelling, and the construction of Anderson’s singular aesthetic.’
Looking forward to this. Tickets available here.
Welcome to my website. Intended primarily as an online gallery to feature a selection of my paintings from over the years, I will also be keeping it updated with news of exhibitions, new works and projects.
By way of introduction I have selected one picture from each of the five categories listed in the menus: Figures, Interiors, Still Lifes, Heads and Portraits. I am aware that these groupings appear somewhat arbitrary; indeed many works might be in any, or several catagories, but we felt it helpful to break them up a bit for convenience and accessibility.
Many thanks to Philip Rees (Reflecting Head) for creating the site, and for taking such care over its design and construction.
I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for looking.
My fictional Renaissance ‘masterpiece’ Boy with Apple will be on display for the first time in the UK in a major new London exhibition of the archives of film director Wes Anderson at the Design Museum, London. A commission from Anderson for his Oscar winning movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, the painting has been rather drolly mounted behind bullet proof glass (“Crucial protection!…” Anderson).
As well as finished props and sets, the exhibition features work-in-progress material and maquettes, and looks at the variety of traditional and hand-made film-making techniques that the director continues to celebrate through his work.
The Museum website states: This landmark exhibition will chart the evolution of Wes Anderson’s films from early experiments in the 1990s to recent productions as well as collaborations with key long-standing creative partners. Over 700 objects will bring together the director’s meticulous craft of film-making through original storyboards, Polaroids, sketches, paintings, handwritten notebooks, puppets, miniature models, and dozens of costumes worn by much-loved characters’
Open now until the 26 July at the Design Museum, Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG.
World tour follows until 2030
Elsewhere you can find Boy with Apple, the fictional Renaissance portrait by the equally fictional Johannes van Hoytl the Younger that is the plot driver in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Painted over four months by the British artist Michael Taylor, who discussed with Anderson everything from the boy’s clothes to a piece of paper on the wall behind him, it may be the most meticulously created MacGuffin in cinema history.
THE TIMES *****
‘Still Life’; an exhibition of recent work at the Portland Gallery opens on 5th June 2025. The exhibition can be viewed online at their website.
To quote from the catalogue notes:
‘Michael Taylor’s new collection of still lifes are an invitation to look — and to think about looking. The paintings allow us to inhabit spaces and range over textures.
Viewed at a distance or on a screen, they seem smooth and flawless. Get close, in person, and a mosaic of inventive brushstrokes appears….
Focussing on small collections of objects, these newer paintings seem minimalist when compared to Taylor’s figurative works of a few years earlier…..
The desire to make pots is just as strong as the desire to make likenesses of hands and faces. Other than our own skeletons, the thing we humans reliably leave behind are shards of ceramics.’ Alfie Robinson
About Portland Gallery:
‘Our exhibition programme has concentrated primarily on representing the best modern and contemporary figurative artists working in traditional media. In parallel, Portland have enjoyed considerable success as dealers in abstract paintings and sculptures by some of the most prominent figures of 20th century British Art.’
The exhibition continues until 20th June. Enquiries to jasmine@portlandgallery.com
Alfie Robinson
Old masters’ still lifes tell us ‘memento mori’. Michael Taylor’s still lifes tell us, among other things, ‘non omnis moriar’ — I shall not wholly die.
I am pleased to now be represented by Portland Gallery, London and will be showing new works with them in June 2025.
This is a happy development for me having worked with Jamie Anderson for sixteen years at Waterhouse and Dodd before he moved to be director of Portland, so he is already aware of all my quirks and foibles. I now look forward to working with the team at the Gallery which is situated just off Piccadilly at 3 Bennett Street, London SW1A 1RP.
Portland Gallery are leading dealers in Modern and Contemporary British art. Their two-floor gallery in St James’s hosts up to fourteen exhibitions a year; largely solo presentations of work by their represented artists and estates. Throughout the history of the gallery, their exhibition programme has concentrated primarily in representing the best modern and contemporary figurative artists working in traditional media. In parallel, Portland are dealers in abstract paintings and sculptures by some of the most prominent figures of 20th century British Art.
