Walt Taylor – RIP
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Cartoonist and illustrator and sketch artist Walt Taylor has passed away.
Walt Taylor
December 21, 1946 – October 8, 2026
Colin Warren-Hicks forThe Norfolk Virginian-Pilot has the obituary (or here):
“He died Oct. 8 at the age of 79 after a long struggle with dementia.
“Prior to his health’s decline, he sat inside Cafe Stella on Colonial Avenue with pencil and pen nearly every day for almost 15 years. He watched the staff and the comers and goers and sketched, quietly, the people he observed.”
“In the 1970s, he moved to Norfolk … and got a job helping to create business publications for the architecture firm McGaughy, Marshall, and McMillan.”
“Taylor began freelancing his art to publications while also receiving a job offer in the arts and visual department of Lawler Ballard advertising firm, where he was employed for much of the 1980s.”
The obituary continues:
“In the early 2000s, a Virginian-Pilot editorial page editor asked Taylor to draw a whole page of cartoons on any local topic of his choosing. And Taylor impressed. “Walt Taylor’s sketchbook” became a regular feature of the Sunday Forum pages starting in 2007.”
“In 2009, the newspaper hired him as an editorial cartoonist, necessitating that his work become more political … His work appeared regularly in the paper through 2018.”
“In the last years of his life as he suffered from dementia, and without a spouse or children or family in Virginia, it was the staff of Cafe Stella that looked after Taylor, bringing him food morning and night.”
Taylor maintained a Facebook page and an Instagram account.
His Crack Skull Bob blog is available through the Wayback Machine.
The above political cartoons come from his Flickr site.
The short film Walt Taylor – Remaster is a 12 minute autobiography.
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