This issue’s cover, “Time Traveler,” is a digital composite created by Gainesville, Florida artist Maggie Taylor.

Originally a photographer (she has a master’s degree in photography from the University of Florida, as well as a philosophy degree from Yale University), Taylor spent years photographing still lifes. But in 1995 her husband at the time, Jerry Uelsmann, also a photographer, was asked by the creative director of Adobe to manipulate his surreal images using Photoshop. He didn’t take to it. But she did, transforming her work into what might be called lighthearted surrealism, along the lines of Dali and Magritte.

Since then she’s become a preeminent digital artist, profiled in The New York Times in 2011, and featured in an Adobe Photoshop Master Class, as well as other courses. She’s also had exhibitions in many galleries and museums around the country, including The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; The George Eastman House, Rochester; The High Museum, Atlanta; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; The Art Museum, Princeton University; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; and The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara.

In her NYT interview she described her aesthetic by saying, “I use pretty minimal and simple features. I try not to get overwhelmed by the technical aspects of it. But as new features have allowed for higher quality images, that’s changed my work. Things have become more intricate and layered and I’m braver about having many more layers in the images than I used to be. When I started out I didn’t think that I could do all of my work in Photoshop. I never really saw it as the ultimate answer to everything. But I now realize that there’s no other way I could do this kind of work. I couldn’t imagine myself using a camera and film anymore.”

Taylor continues to exhibit her work. In the next year she will be featured at the Altered States: Group Show, at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art in Telluride, CO (July 7 – August 5, 2021), the Brumfield Gallery, Astoria, OR (Solo Exhibition, September 11 – November 8, 20210, and The Light Factory, Charlotte, NC (Maggie Taylor Retrospective, March 10 – May 13, 2022). Find out more at https://maggietaylor.com.