Simon Tayler is a sculptor whose work investigates form, materials and texture at the juncture of the organic and the mechanical. After a successful career in film and television special effects, he returned to sculpture and, in 2024, relocated from London to Stroud, establishing a studio in Thrupp. Working primarily in wood, Tayler constructs intricately curved forms through an incremental, quasi-mathematical process that he uses as a metaphor for inner states of mind—balance, tension and transition. His pieces often suggest points of contact with the world—feet, dishes, listening or transmitting devices—grounding imagination in the physical. Technically meticulous and time-intensive, the practice has evolved over the past five years. Tayler holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Sculpture from Liverpool School of Art, where he received the postgraduate John Moores Scholarship.
Simon Tayler is a sculptor exploring the interplay of the organic and the mechanical through form, materials and texture. Following a successful career as a special effects designer for film and television, Tayler returned to his first discipline—sculpture—and in 2024 moved from London to Stroud, setting up a new studio in Thrupp.
Working chiefly in wood, Tayler values the material’s natural warmth and its honest, tactile presence. Acknowledging wood’s associative pull—towards musical instrumentality, the antique or the nostalgic—he uses it to anchor works that are ultimately about interior experience. Over the past five years he has developed a language of constructed curves, built by adding or subtracting factors at each stage. While there is maths in the method, the process remains empirical: Tayler responds aesthetically as trajectories emerge, coil, or resolve—metaphors for thought in motion, sometimes coherent, sometimes tangled.
Motifs of contact recur: feet that “touch the ground,” dishes that seem to listen or transmit, windows between inner and outer worlds. Stability and transition co-exist—three points of contact for poise, a fourth metaphysical point for imagination. The work is technically intricate and slow to make; repetition becomes a meditative space in which decisions surface and the next move clarifies.
Tayler holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Sculpture from Liverpool School of Art and was awarded the postgraduate John Moores Scholarship.
