BY SCOTT ANDERSON

Norman Taylor has learned one important life lesson that has taught him to “go with the flow.”

“Life’s not going to stop,” he said. “You’re not going to get a certain time back, so try to do as much as you can with your time.”

Taylor does a lot with his time. In August 2020, the 29-year-old artist sold his first painting. Elizabeth Eldridge, the mother of one of Taylor’s former teammates at C.E. Byrd High School, had seen a video of Taylor sketching.

“She was like, ‘If you ever wanted to get back to doing it for real, let me know. I would really like one,’” he said. “I’ve been rolling ever since.”

The Eldridge family not only bought a painting from Taylor. They helped him set up his business, too. He takes commissions for original paintings and sells prints of his work at notbyhand.us.

Art has been a longtime interest for Taylor. In second grade he entered the Talented Arts Program. But he didn’t fancy himself a painter.

“I never liked painting,” he said. “I just liked to sketch.”

He got serious about his art at Broadmoor Middle School. But he wasn’t thinking about becoming a professional artist. He had other dreams he was chasing on the football field.

“At 9 years old, I knew I was going to go to high school, get recruited and play at USC for Pete Carroll and then get drafted by the Chicago Bears,” Taylor said. “I knew what cars I was going to have — all of that.”

Life does not stop, but sometimes it changes directions without warning.

Taylor remembers Sept. 16, 2008, like it was yesterday. It was just two days after his 15th birthday. He was on the practice field, preparing for Byrd’s Week 3 matchup against West Monroe, when the unimaginable happened.

“We call it a sweep drill,” Taylor said. “It’s a form-tackling drill. “When I went down to tackle my teammate, whiplash — a freak accident.”

The doctor diagnosed it as a C7 incomplete spinal cord injury, meaning his spinal cord was still intact. It was better than a C7 complete, Taylor said.

“That means the spinal cord is completely severed,” he said of a C7 complete. “For them, it’s always that 0.000001… whatever percent chance. For me, the percentage for regaining movement was higher.”

Taylor was wheelchair bound when he returned to Shreveport. He began homeschooling that December to keep up with his classmates. That’s when the gravity of the situation began to settle on him.

“You drop into a certain depression,” he said. “From the time I got home, I didn’t really leave my room unless it was for a doctor’s appointment or to eat, or to be homeschooled. I didn’t feel like I needed to be social. I was afraid to go back because I was in a different physical state than I was at first.”

In April 2009, he returned to the Byrd campus. The plan was to be on campus for a few classes, up to half a day.

“I ended up the next day just going back full time,” Taylor said. “I realized when I got back, they were just so happy to see me it didn’t really matter.”

Taylor said he spent his junior year readjusting to being among a lot of people again. But that wasn’t his biggest challenge.

“I was having to deal with going to PT rather than going to practice,” he said. “It was a different type of working out, regaining my mobility.”

In his senior year, Taylor was discharged from rehab because his progress had plateaued, he said. “Like everybody else, you have fun your senior year,” he added.

He started college at LSUS the next fall. That was a wake-up call for him.

“Anybody can draw,” he said. “A lot of people think it’s something you’re born with. It’s really something you develop. They call it neuroplasticity. Those transmitters in the brain. You wonder why Floyd Mayweather is such a good boxer. It’s because he does the same thing over and over.”

In addition to being competitive, Taylor also is a perfectionist. So much so that in the early days of his art career, Taylor wouldn’t accept down payments for his work.

“I treasure quality over quantity,” Taylor said. “If it’s not up to what I like, I will have them throw it away and start over.”

Thomas Williams has been assisting Taylor since 2013 and has seen that perfectionism in action.

“People don’t know how many masterpieces he’s done that only the trash can has seen,” Williams said.

Williams admits to rescuing one of those works Taylor discarded. It hangs in the Williams house today. It’s a symbol of the respect Williams has for Taylor, his artwork, and his process.

“Me being with him all the time, assisting him and watching him, people don’t understand the process he goes through,” Williams said. “Seeing him go from a blank canvas to a finished painting, it’s amazing. I’m blessed every day to see him go through the process.”

Taylor has a job at General Dynamics. He continues to paint and anticipates having his first art show in February. He also is designing T-shirts and hoodies that feature his artwork.