Jo Taylor was born in Lancashire in 1969. She studied at Leeds Metropolitan University and is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Liverpool.

Rigorous life drawing and patient observation are the starting points for these visually arresting works. It is through watching, drawing and riding horses that Jo Taylor captures a sense of their power and presence. Like her influences Leonardo and Gericault, Jo is attracted to the expressive body of animals.

Taylor captures the shapes and the patterns and the energy of these creatures. Her surfaces – charcoal, chalks, watercolour, acrylics, bitumen and wax – gather a momentum of their own. Sometimes she flings sand or grit at the canvas. Rachel Campbell-Johnston, 2008

Jo has travelled the world looking at horses: on the Camargue marshes, at the Jerez horse fair, out in Montana cattle country and on the plains of South Africa. Once she is home again she likes – “to celebrate what is on my doorstep”.

For her exhibition in 2010, she focused on the Coolmore Stud in Ireland, to paint the crown jewels of British bloodstock, a dynasty unrivalled anywhere in the world.

This is awe inspiring, expensive horseflesh rendered in bold, muscular, fluid strokes with the confidence that comes from Taylor’s intimate understanding of equine anatomy.
Extract from exhibition catalogue introduction by Jane Wheatley;   Lena Boyle Fne Art,  London, 2010.

Jo has had numerous solo exhibitions and her work is in notable private collections, including The Duke and Duchess of Westminster, The Duke and Duchess of Bedford, The Earl of Cadogan, Nicky Henderson and many others.

The most recent exhibition of her work has been at the Victoria Gallery and Museum, University of Liverpool, 2012.