Badassery Magazine December 2017 Issue 19 | Page 41

About Taylor Lee
I'm a self-taught artist who inherited my love for painting from my grandmother. I was born in North
Carolina, but I'm currently on a road trip across the United States with my husband and our pug, Frida.
I'm probably listening to Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love" as you read this. My second love is
writing. I'm currently working on a book to release in 2018. I struggled with an eating disorder for over
ten years, and surviving it has made me strong in ways that I never imagined were possible. Body pos-
itivity is a major theme in most of my work, especially my portraiture and floral pieces. I'm currently
working on a project, the Better With Color Project, in which I create 100 paintings that tell the stories
of 100 people.
About the art
This year I studied color. I realized that it wasn't just a substance in a tube that I could buy at Blick.
Color is moving, breathing, and changing constantly. It walks this earth, it talks to us, and it's compli-
catedly beautiful. Most of all, it is utterly human. I paint for survivors of pain, who want to see something
beautiful come from it all. The people I paint for are vibrant, dynamic, and passionate. They value joy,
real talk, and originality. They take risks (no judgment here - I quit my job and moved to Mexico!), and
find freedom and growth along the way. You know what? They’re downright inspirational. They are em-
powered. They are moving. They are color. And the world is much better with color.
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