Taylor Harbison was born in Greenville, Mississippi in 1957. He lived throughout his life in the South until he moved to New York City in 1979. He studied art with Isabell McIlvain and I. Hsuing Ju at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia; and with Hilary Holmes, an R.H. Ives Gammel student, at the Art Students League of New York. Much of his education consisted of observation of the Italian Master of the Rinascimento and Barocco. He worked full-time as an artist from 1985. In the 1990’s he had frequent use of a Florentine studio in the Palazzo Borghese, and worked in studio spaces in Hoboken, New Jersey and Hudson, New York.

Taylor Harbison worked until his death on March 30, 2006 from Burkett’s Lymphoma at the age of 49 - a long-term survivor of AIDS.

He was survived by his partner, Dr. Daniel Garza, and their family of friends and relatives.