As a teenager, Rudolph Cameron Taylor was fortunate enough to sail from his native New England aboard Irving Johnson's famous brigantine Yankee. He spent eighteen months with the ship as she roamed the South Pacific. His exposure to the many incredible creatures of those warm, blue waters, led him to a career in marine science. With considerable raw talent, he financed his way through college doing illustrations for natural history publications. 

Those early experiences have led to a lifelong devotion to the study and preservation of wild things around the globe. Since directing his interests from research into the arts, Taylor's work has been featured in numerous publications and exhibitions. More than a dozen monumental sculptures have been commissioned to grace outdoor locations worldwide. 

Rudy Taylor's background as a marine biologist endows his work with a unique quality, a blend of art and science. His sculpture is noted for its anatomical correctness, yet whimsical depiction, giving each of his subjects a distinct personality. 

Now a resident of Sausalito, California, Rudy still returns once a year to his beloved South Pacific, where he maintains an open-air studio on the remote island of Tubuai in French Polynesia. There, in the shade of a palm tree, is where he brings his art to life. 

Postscript: December 23, 1999 Rudy Taylor passed away this date on the island of Tubai at the age of Sixty-four. He will be missed by many, but his art will live on. 

The artisans at SMALL PLANET STUDIOS are proud to present Rudy Taylor's MARINE Collection, a series of individually cast, cold cast bronze mirror frames. This process combines the timeless qualities of traditional bronze casting with durable, modern materials. Each ready to hang sculpture is hand finished and patinaed to capture in exquisite detail the artist's original work. 

Born in New York City in 1894, Norman Rockwell's greatest desire from an early age was to be an illustrator. In 1909, at the age of 15, he left high school to begin his studies at the National Academy of Design and the Art Student's League. There he worked under the famous George Bridgeman who taught him a rigorous series of technical skills which he relied on throughout his long career. 

Rockwell found success early. He painted his first commission, four Christmas cards, before his sixteenth birthday. While still in his teens, he was hired as art director for Boys' Life and began a successful freelance career working for a variety of young people's publications. 

At the age of 21, Rockwell moved to New Rochelle, New York, a community which housed a sizable colony of successful illustrators including the Leyendecker brothers, Coles Phillips and Howard Chandler Christy. There he set up a studio with the cartoonist Clyde Forsythe. During this period of his early career, Rockwell produced work for such well-known magazines as Life, Literary Digest and Country Gentleman. In 1916, at the age of 22, Rockwell's first cover for the Saturday Evening Post appeared, a commission then considered to be the pinnacle of achievement for an illustrator. Over the next 47 years, Rockwell produced 321 covers for the Post. In 1916 he married Irene O'Connor, a marriage that would end in divorce in 1929. 

The decades of the 1930s and 1940s are considered by many to be the richest of Rockwell's career. Certainly, this was the period in which his popularity was at its peak. In 1930, he married Mary Barstow, a union which produced Rockwell's three sons, Jarvis, Thomas and Peter. The family moved to Arlington, Vermont in 1939 and Rockwell's work began to reflect small town American life more consistently. 

In 1943, Rockwell created a series of four paintings based on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's famous concept of the Four Freedoms. The paintings were reproduced in the Saturday Evening Post alongside essays by famous thinkers of the day. An interpretation of the individual's role in American democracy, the series was enormously popular and ultimately toured the country in an exhibition sponsored by the Post and Treasury Department to sell war bonds. The exhibition raised more than $130 million for the war effort, primarily in small denomination bonds. 

1943 also represented a year of loss for Rockwell when his Arlington studio burned and he lost numerous paintings, costumes and props. In 1948, Rockwell began the Four Seasons Calendars for Brown and Bigelow, the beginning of a tradition which would continue for seventeen years. 

The Rockwell family moved from Arlington, Vermont to Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 1953. Six years later, in 1959, Mary Barstow Rockwell died. In 1960, Rockwell's autobiography My Adventures as an Illustrator appeared, a work he wrote and illustrated in collaboration with his son, Tom. The Saturday Evening Post excerpted portions of the book in a series of articles, one of which featured the famous Triple Self-Portrait on the cover. 

Rockwell's third marriage took place in 1961 to Mary (Molly) Punderson, a former teacher at Milton Academy outside of Boston. Two years later, Rockwell ended his long association with the Saturday Evening Post. The next year, his first Look magazine illustrations appeared. The ten-year association with Look allowed Rockwell to paint pictures about some of his deepest concerns, including the civil rights movement and the war on poverty. In 1965, he began his chronicles of man's travels to the moon for the publication. 

In 1973, Rockwell established a trust to preserve his artistic legacy and placed it under the custodianship of the Old Corner House in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. This trust now forms the core of The Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge's permanent collection. In 1976, Rockwell placed his Stockbridge studio and all its contents in trust to the museum. The next year, Rockwell was presented with perhaps his highest honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his "vivid and affectionate portraits of our country." He died peacefully at home on November 8, 1978. 

Arguably one of America's finest artists, Norman Rockwell has gained recognition through his famous portrayals of children caught in moments of humor, sadness, joy, and everyday life. Rockwell managed to capture the American heart and in so doing, has left behind a legacy of intimate creations. Born in New York City on February 3, 1894, Rockwell left high school early to study at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York.Working for the Saturday Evening Post for more than forty years, he produced more than 400 covers. He also painted a great number of pictures for story illustrations, advertising campaigns, posters, calendars, and books. Using oils, he developed his realistic technique, idealizing small-town America and its entirety. He was an illustrator for major periodicals such as St. Nicholas, Collier's, Life, and Look. Rockwell made his home in Arlington, Vermont, where many of the settings used in his illustrations, as well as the local folk, become his models. 

Related Reading:
by Maureen Hart Hennessey (Editor), Anne Knutson (Editor), Norman Rockwell, High Museum
by Charles S. Finch, Christopher Robin Finch, Norman Rockwell (Illustrator)
by Tom Rockwell, Norman Rockwell (Illustrator) 

Famous for his hundreds of space paintings for book covers, magazines, movie posters (Star Wars, King Kong, Towering Inferno and others) and even GM car advertisements (!), Berkey's career has been a long and impressive one. He moves easily between personal works, favoring midwestern landscapes, to 'Americana' as subject matter for Brown and Bigelow calendars, to an equally highly personal view of space, painted with his impressionistic and wholly original style of expression. Berkey works in casein, the pigments for which he himself grinds, sometimes in comination with acrylics, and he works only from his own drawings. His amazing ability convinces us that huge spaceships are actually traveling through the voids, or hovering over densely populated space ports and cities, where movement, sight and sound are incorporated into a two-dimensional creation which seems plausible and real. In 1991, Berkey's best work was collected in his artwork Painted Space [Friedlander Publishing], and recently his science fiction and space paintings have been featured as part of the 'Pavilions of Wonder' group show at the Canton Museum of Art. 

WINSLOW HOMER [American Painter, 1836-1910]

Specializes in Maritime Scenes. Winslow Homer was a self-taught American painter and illustrator, considered a master of watercolors. Homer began his career as an illustrator and chronicled the Civil War for Harper's Weekly. Following the war he concentrated on light subjects and pastoral scenes. After a stay in the English fishing village of Cullercoats in 1881-82, his pictures became more dramatic and began to emphasize marine subjects. He is now considered one of the great painters of the sea.

BO SVENSSON [Photographer]

As a photographer, I have chosen to capture some of the world's most beautiful images, at the most perfect moment. These images reflect my great love and respect for nature and man's proper place in it - that of observer, partner and preserver. It's my wish that the joy I experience as a chronicler of nature will enhance your home and touch your heart, so that what I have captured in photography today, will continue to exist and flourish for the enjoyment of the coming generations.