Taylor McKimens has been known for years as a painter of “American Life”, making large and narrative paintings that feature rural tableaux, economically marginalized people, overlooked and often beautiful details of the natural world and cultural debris. He is such an evocative visual storyteller and technical draftsman that viewers may not have noticed that his paintings were getting more and more experimental in technique. Over the past few years the backgrounds have gotten abstract and hectic, colors have gone haywire as he switches color mid-brushstroke and inverts shadows and highlights, and topographical line work has proliferated to both render volumes and collapse space.