Pearlie Taylor was Born in Vance, Mississippi and raised in Chicago. She was the second oldest of nine children and spent much of her time helping her mother with the chores and drawing on scraps of paper and brown paper bags. As a child, she would sell drawings to her 3rd grade classmates for five cents apiece. Not only did she have an interest in art she was also very fond of writing and creating stories. Storytelling was just as important to her as the ladies she was drawing on paper. Pearlie had her first child at fifteen and by the age of twenty-two she was married and had five children. Between raising children, at night, she finished high school and attended Kennedy King City College eventually moving on to Roosevelt University. While at Roosevelt her focus changed. That “art thing” was still nagging at her so, she finished that semester at Roosevelt and registered at The American Academy of Art. Her goal was just to see if in fact, there was anything to all the dabbling and drawing she had been doing for most of her life. Most of this occurred during the seventies to mid-eighties while juggling a position in Sears Catalog Advertising department, a husband and five children. The American Academy of Art opened a whole new wonderful world into art for her and thus her formal art studies began. She used every free moment to learn and practice. She worked in graphite, watercolor, oils, charcoal, and pastels creating figurative work, landscapes, still life’s everything but abstract. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that she picked up acrylics and that became her medium of choice because of its flexibility. Pearlie was widowed in 2002 after nearly twenty-five years of marriage. The urge to paint intensified after the death of her husband who was also a jazz musician, maybe it was because he always encouraged her to take more time to paint or it could have been because it caused her to think about her own mortality and she had to know where she stood as an artist in the real world. She sold the UPS Store franchised they owned, the three-story home in Bronzeville with practically every in it and began life anew as an artist. The freedom of mind and body lifted the pressure of just trying to finish a painting before her busy day kicked in, and in the process her work changed from being figurative to being wet, loose and free. Apparently, the clarity caused a shift in her artistic thinking and allowed her natural expression to emerge. At that point she knew she had found herself. The next chapter began with Gallery Guichard who is still a constant in her art life. Pearlie’s abstract expressionist style is instinctual, sometimes it’s like music and everyone hears it differently or more about feelings than intellectualizing. She paints with her canvas on the floor and over time has learned to trust the process and be guided by instinct. She believes the use of color can affect a conscious change in individuals, creating a “subliminal communication”. Her works are in personal collections throughout the US. She has been published in several magazines and is Currently represented by Gallery Guichard of Chicago, IL.
