Sarah Taylor trained as a painter at Chelsea College of Art (UAL) and gained a PhD by practice research from the University of Ulster, funded by the Department of employment and learning (DEL).
Her doctorate research: Aspirational Beauty: Backgrounds and Backdrops the staging of class, investigates how her practice is situated within codes of working-classness and gender as they relate to questions of aesthetics and value in fine art practice.
The concept is traced and articulated through a process of writing through multi-disciplinary perspectives that incorporate and link painting, history, material culture, literature, sociology and fine art practice. Taylor argues that Aspirational Beauty is a creative resistance to conforming to socially inscribed ideals of respectability and as a possible position in establishing aesthetic resistance to class shame.
Sarah has taught for three decades in higher education (BA, MA, PhD) and advocates the method of life writing and the importance of personal narrative to articulate identities and social backgrounds.
She lives and works in Leeds, West Yorkshire.