With a career spanning multiple artistic fields, including painting, set design, and theater production, this Robert U. Taylor's work reflects a deep connection to Greek culture—despite not having Greek ancestry.
His exposure to Greek myths and history from a young age, along with his extensive travels throughout Greece, has profoundly shaped both his artistic style and thematic choices. Known for his evocative watercolor paintings and significant contributions to over 100 Broadway productions, he also co-founded the Greek Theater of New York.
In this interview with Portes Magazine, we explore how Taylor's childhood experiences, travels, and multidisciplinary background have influenced his approach to color, composition, and storytelling.
"My childhood was spent in Virginia, where my family and its antecedents have lived since 1710. As a child, my father used to read stories of the Greek myths and hero legends to me, and he would draw pictures for me of the various gods."
Your connection to Greece and Greek culture runs deep, though you are not of Hellenic descent. Tell us about an early experience that drew you to Greek culture and inspired you to explore it through your art?
My childhood was spent in Virginia, where my family and its antecedents have lived since 1710. As a child, my father used to read stories of the Greek myths and hero legends to me, and he would draw pictures for me of the various gods. At his suggestion, I remember reading Pope’s translation of The Iliad when I was eight years old, so I have had a connection with the history and land of Greece since I was very young.
You've traveled extensively in Greece, particularly to the Peloponnese, which is your wife's homeland. How has this region shaped your work, both thematically and stylistically?
When we first got married, the first thing we did was spend a month in Greece. We repeated this experience for four more years following, and traveled all over a good deal of the country.
My impressions were very emotionally driven, aware as I was of the nature and identity of what I was seeing and experiencing, due to my long exposure to Greek culture from my past life reading. I recall Cape Sounion Head, southeast of Athens, where the great temple of Poseidon stands high above the Aegean, where, if you lie quietly in the sea below, I swear to you that I could hear the god breathing.
Likewise, at the ruins of the house and treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, the hair on the back of your head rises. There is a terror there. And the view from Delphi, down the olive tree-covered slopes to the Sea of Corinth, is one of the great landscapes of the world.
Understand that what is important there is not just the place, spectacular as it is by its natural self. It is what happened there over the long centuries, the interaction of humans and the place itself, that makes it powerful. That is why the Caribbean, though certainly beautiful, holds no attraction for me, as it has none of this history or these echoes and unseen presences.
What medium do you use for your artwork, and how much of it would you say is inspired by Greece/Greek mythology?
The medium I most like to paint in, watercolor, appeals to me because it is fast, it won’t let you linger over it, and also because of the danger. Watercolor is as dangerous as stone carving because you cannot make a mistake. Once the color or wash is down, it’s done for good. You can’t change it.
With oils, acrylics, gouache, or whatever, you can always fix it, but not this medium. So, it is kind of like juggling—you have 45 seconds to get the sky down. After that, it’s too late. I really like the danger in it.
What do you enjoy the most about creating art?
I guess, really, that subject matter affects and influences me first; its unique and different look, its balance, its lights and darks. Color is the matrix in my mind into which all this fits, and even if others don’t see color there, I do, and choose to emphasize or even overemphasize it.
There is great joy in color, the act of painting makes me happy, and so an emphasis on color will always be present.I think that often artists get so interested in the “forest,” the gestalt, of a painting, that they forget the “trees.”
A landscape can exist within a few inches of pebbles, sticks, water, and plants. I like to notice this in paint. I pay attention to it—particularly the subtleties of color and shade and reflected light on a wall, tree trunk, or under a stone. I want to show it and make others aware of its presence.
What would you say is your greatest challenge when it comes to creating artwork?
Probably (unless it is a commission), why I ought to paint something in the first place. Is there a backstory to the subject? Why should I paint this subject? What about it moves me to want to transfer it to paper? The painting part is easy—the why part takes a bit of time, for me.
"At the ruins of the house and treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, the hair on the back of your head rises. There is a terror there. And the view from Delphi, down the olive tree-covered slopes to the Sea of Corinth, is one of the great landscapes of the world...what is important there is not just the place, spectacular as it is by its natural self. It is what happened there over the long centuries, the interaction of humans and the place itself, that makes it powerful. That is why the Caribbean, though certainly beautiful, holds no attraction for me, as it has none of this history or these echoes and unseen presences."
You have painted an olive tree and hidden words in this painting. What is the inspiration/story behind this piece?
Most of my paintings of Greece (or at any rate the ones in the Sappho-inspired group) have hidden texts in them—partly to connect the poem to the painting, and also because I like the fun of putting the comment in there. It’s an additional bit of interest for the onlooker.
You mentioned your painting To Gain the Harbor is inspired by Sappho’s poem, where sailors find safety after battling fierce winds. How do you feel your work mirrors this theme of struggle and triumph in the artistic journey?
My approach to a painting and the time spent on it: I look at it for maybe one or two days to see if I like it. I usually like a painting when I start it. In the middle, I am sure that I have screwed up somewhere, and then at the end, I sort of like it again, maybe. Also, set design training helps here—I know that it’s done when, as I used to say to my film set build crew, “OK, walk away.”
Generally, I decide that I really like it after two days, and then immediately forget it and move on to the next one. It is the act of painting that is the important part, the process of becoming something from nothing. The finished work, to me, is what’s left over.
Is there any one place in Greece that inspires you the most, or that you consider your favorite, and why?
Not in any particular order: the Mountains of the Peloponnesos, the islands of Skiathos, Skopelos, Paros, Samos, and Crete. But not in the winter. Also, maybe the Mani and the Samarian Gorge in Crete, because the Ottomans could never subdue them.
What about Greece do you love the most?
I don’t know—I pretty much like all of Greece. Its great diversity, the scents of Greece—the pines and the sounds of the wind through them, the honeysuckle, the staphilia. The sounds of the cicadas and crickets, the heat on the stones, the soft wash of the incoming Aegean waves on the sand.
How have your diverse influences shaped your approach to color, technique, and composition in your artwork?
I learned how to think about art from my time as a designer. I learned style and line from the Chinese masters of the Sung, Ming, and late Qing dynasties. I learned color from Hokusai and Hiroshige, just about everyone in the Momoyama Period, and Jack Kirby of Marvel Comics.
Also, I am naturally attuned to color from just looking around. I learned technique in two ways—one from, probably, Velázquez (greatest painter who ever lived), Grünewald (??!!), Sargent, Childe Hassam, and others; and the other—well, I’ll just tell the old English lawn joke: Visitor to old gardener on Ducal Estate lawn: “My good man, how do you get your lawn to look so beautifully even, rich, and green?” Old gardener to visitor: “Well, we mow it and roll it, and we roll it and mow it… for 300 years.”Just keep painting, and you pretty much pick up technique naturally.
Hokusai, the great Japanese printmaker, said before he died, “If Heaven had only granted me five more years, maybe then I could have become a real painter.” Hokusai was surely unique, yet he searched further even with his last breath. I paint the way I do because it is who I am. I like painting like that, with those colors, that composition, that group of brush strokes, that darkness and light contrast, etc. We can only express our art externally, through the one way that is unique to each of us. I cannot suggest to you that you should paint, or sculpt, a little bit differently this way or that—because the way it comes out is who you are.
" Hokusai, the great Japanese printmaker, said before he died, 'If Heaven had only granted me five more years, maybe then I could have become a real painter.' Hokusai was surely unique, yet he searched further even with his last breath."
Aside from having designed over 100 productions both on Broadway and in the U.S., you have co-founded the Greek Theater of New York, where you designed for productions like Agamemnon and Oedipus Tyrannus. How has your experience as a set designer influenced your approach to painting, and vice versa?
I knew, from maybe six or seven years old, that I wanted to be an artist. I was good at it, my parents encouraged it, and that was the only track I have ever traveled on. I had no idea where it would lead—from classical art training to stage design to TV and feature film design to computer and architectural design, back to painting. But there was never any doubt in my mind as to what I was going to do with my life.
My family moved to Swarthmore, PA, in my mid-teen years, where my formal education was spent at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (where, for the first year, you were not permitted to paint... only to copy in charcoal the Academy’s huge collection of full-scale Greek and Roman sculpture plaster casts, and life drawing—the end result was that you emerged being able to draw anything), and the University of Pennsylvania, where I became obsessively involved with the University Theater.
I acted in and designed every play and musical they did for three years, so simultaneously becoming a set designer. I discovered that more people want to be actors (and, for that matter, painters) than want to be set designers, so I went for set designing after college.
Also, to be a painter, you have to sit in a room day after day painting pictures—theater had more interaction with people, and so was a lot more fun. I continued to paint, both in watercolor, but mainly in oils—in a sort of Dali-esque magic realism violently colored world, with touches of Ivan LeLorraine Albright (remember him?). But that took too much psychic energy, which I needed for set design work—one must make a living.
I went on to Yale, studied under Donald Oenslager, one of the last courtly and noble designers of the early 20th century, who lived in a big, heavily curtained 5th Avenue apartment. I learned a lot from him, as you had to crank out one set design every week for his criticism. So, you learned to put together research material, think fast, eat junk food, and not sleep, and especially, paint fast.
A painting can, more or less, exist on its own without a requisite backstory. But a set design must reflect and include the entire culture, sensibility, psychology, and personalities of the characters in the drama, together with the Director’s ideas about all of the above, the Designer’s style (if any), the space in which the drama will be staged, and the physical necessity of moving efficiently in that space. All of this I came to think about instinctively, and that attitude has, I believe, transferred to some of my painting (certainly the Greek ones).
WORDS | Portes Magazine
IMAGES | Robert U. Taylor