Taylor McMahan’s relationship with art hasn’t been a straight line. After studying at the School of the Arts and Western Carolina University, she stepped away from the studio for a decade. During that time, she worked in the entertainment industry building wigs—creating identities for characters rather than working on a canvas.
Her residency at Azule marks a major turning point: a return to her own art after ten years away. “This is kind of my step away from the world to reignite my passion back into this side of things,” she says. While she has always been drawn to portraiture and the stories found in faces, her focus has shifted inward since becoming a mother three years ago.
Taylor’s current work examines the universal experiences many women share: the scars and joys of motherhood, the weight of family history, and the isolation that can come with major life transitions. By bringing these feelings to the surface, she hopes to help others feel a little less alone.
Her inspiration has changed, too. She used to try to be “the loudest artist in the room,” but motherhood has taught her to find beauty in the mundane. Now, she looks for material in the “gum of life”—the small, everyday details like sunlight through a window, a jar of acorns collected by her daughter, or the story told by a person’s dirty hands.
At Azule, Taylor found the quiet she needed to process these thoughts. “You can’t know how overburdened you are mentally until you do get away and it’s just quiet suddenly,” she explains. The seclusion of the mountains allowed her to start with a clean slate and translate her feelings more clearly onto the canvas.
During her stay, she worked on pieces that pull directly from her history, including a painting about her complicated childhood relationship with her mother. She is also creating a series of “postcards to memories”—paintings of specific physical locations, like a spot in East Laporte or a condemned childhood home, that serve as anchors for different emotional chapters of her life.