As the Crow Flies

In As the Crow Flies, Roo Taylor considers the spaces that connect us, both physically and emotionally. The landscape is reorganized: distances collapse, familiar paths become irrelevant, and relationships between places emerge through the act of looking closely. From above, expansive landscapes signal emotional distance, yet on the ground, dense foliage and water systems tell a story of interconnectedness and deep emotion. Taylor’s paintings push and pull on that paradox, revealing how obstacles to connection become insignificant with a change in perspective.

By building up layers of transparent washes of high-flow acrylic paint and acrylic ink, Taylor creates landscapes of saturated color that hover between atmosphere and form. Her compositions resist immediate recognition, instead inviting viewers into spaces that feel simultaneously familiar and imagined. Mountains, foliage, water, and shifting horizons become less literal depictions of place than portraits of emotion and the interconnectedness of human relationships and experience. Light and color operate as both material and metaphor. Each translucent layer carries traces of what came before, creating depth through accumulation and revealing how individual experiences exist within larger systems. Light becomes a measure of energy; color becomes a vehicle for emotion. The resulting landscapes act as simulacra of states of being: universal but each possessing a unique aura and luminosity. 

Like the crow’s flight, Taylor’s paintings propose another way of understanding distance: not as separation, but as something that can be crossed. As the Crow Flies reminds us that the paths we shape and follow throughout life are not visible from a bird’s eye view and invites us to question what lies between us. Her work suggests that even when our paths appear separate, there are invisible lines continually drawing us toward one another. We need only to reach out towards the same horizon.

About the Artist:

Roo Taylor (b. 2003) is a Baltimore-based artist originally from Denver, Colorado. She earned her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is currently a resident artist at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore. Working primarily with high-flow acrylic paint and acrylic ink, Taylor uses transparency and layered color to create abstract landscapes. Her work explores the interplay between the natural world and human relationships, exploring the emotional and atmospheric depth through fluid, natural spaces. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries across Baltimore, Denver, Philadelphia and New York, as well as internationally at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in Japan. In 2026, her self-titled solo exhibition was presented by Maryland Art Place at the Hotel Indigo in Baltimore.