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J. B. ('Jack') Taylor was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in 1917. After initial art training in his home province, Taylor attended the Arts Student's League in New York in 1936 and 1937. During the Second World War, Taylor enlisted in the Royal Canadian Airforce and was posted as a Draftsman in Moncton, New Brunswick and Edmonton.

After graduating with honours from the Ontario College of Art in 1947, J. B. Taylor began teaching in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Alberta. Taylor 'continued for a time to paint Eastern Canadian subject matter' (J. Allison Forbes, J. B. Taylor, A memorial exhibition organized by the The Edmonton Art Gallery and the University of Alberta Department of Art and Design, 1973). These descriptive works, with conventional subjects and compositional elements were to gradually change.

J. B. Taylor's teaching commitment also included classes with the Community Art program for the University's Department of Extension and at the Banff School of Fine Arts. These years of traveling throughout Alberta enabled Taylor to acquaint himself intimately with the landscape of the province, and in particular the mountains and glaciers, that were to provide the themes and inspiration for his mature work as an artist. These later works exhibit a sense of the landscape as texture, light and rhythm, verging on abstraction.

J. B. Taylor, passed away suddenly in 1970, cutting short his teaching and painting career.