How Gabi Taylor’s art found its place on Wimbledon’s Hill

Back in 2018, Gabi Taylor was a promising British player chasing ranking points and results. Now, she’s back at Wimbledon as an artist, bringing bold colors and a fresh perspective to the Hill she once saw only in passing.

WIMBLEDON -- For the past decade, the Pimm's On The Hill bar has been a hub of revelry for the fans who've turned the grassy slope to the north of No. 1 Court into a Wimbledon institution. The Hill -- formerly known as Aorangi Terrace, it's also gone by Henman Hill and Murray Mound in its time -- is a casual, sometimes rambunctious place where fans can let it all out in front of two big screens, the opposite to the rather prim atmosphere on the show courts themselves.

This year, the bar has had a makeover. It's decorated by an abstract rendering of The Hill, all fiery oranges and lush greens -- a collaboration with artist Gabi Taylor. For Southampton-born Taylor, 27, the commission was a "full-circle moment."

Seven years ago, Taylor thought that Wimbledon might be the site of her first career breakthrough. She was a promising British player who'd received a main-draw wild card, and on her debut in 2018, she fell in three sets to former finalist Eugenie Bouchard. That year, she reached No. 162 in the WTA rankings.

But Taylor gradually fell out of love with professional tennis and a lifestyle that took its toll on her mental health over the next few years. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, she stepped away from the circuit -- and never came back.

On another baking day in the shadow of No. 1 Court, Taylor explains how her route out of tennis ended up leading her back to it.

"Tennis was always my priority one," she said. "When I decided to stop due to personal reasons, I found therapy in art. I started in 2020 -- I just picked up the brush and decided to give it a shot, and I just fell in love with it. It became a passion of mine. I could really bring out my creativity, which is something I didn't really know I had until lockdown. And since then I've been sort of teaching myself. It's been quite a journey, because I've learned everything from scratch -- and I'm still learning."

Taylor has never had formal art lessons, though she's inspired by everything from abstract expressionism to unknown Instagram creators she thinks have "huge potential," citing Pie Herring as an example. Nonetheless, with her tennis career behind her, she took the leap to turn her burgeoning portfolio into a small business.

Her connections in the tennis world provided her with a starter client base. In 2023, she completed her first dog portrait for Jack Draper, now the ATP No. 4, depicting his labradoodle Ozzy with a top hat and cigar. Taylor's paintings and commissions got bigger -- but despite making a success of her new career, she had still transitioned from being an independent worker in one expensive, competitive and precarious career into another.

"It's connected to tennis as well," she said. "Financially it can be a burden on you. And it is a struggle to go full time in something unless you're consistent with it. And with art, it's obviously very difficult to find that consistency."

Fast forward to 2025. Even now, Taylor's art isn't her only venture -- she's also started to dip her toe into working as a tennis agent, with Julian Cash -- who has reached this year's Wimbledon men's doubles final -- as one of her clients. But the approach from Pimm's was "probably the biggest commission I've ever done." In other words, Wimbledon could once more be the site of a career breakthrough for Taylor.

Gabi Taylor/Pimm's

Getty Images/Pimm's

For the painting itself, Taylor aimed to capture the essence of The Hill: "Abstract elements, wildness and colors, vibrant colors," she said. For a line of bespoke limited edition glassware, she had to deviate from her usual style, instead painting a series of individual designs on canvas that were then printed on to the glasses themselves. The results, she says, have blown her away.

"If someone told me about this three years ago, I would have been like, 'You're absolutely joking me. That's not going to happen,'" she said. "It's hard to believe I've been able to create something like that. Before the event started I saw it, just the artwork itself, no people around. That was kind of a wow moment. And it was even more of a wow moment when I saw so many people sitting in front of it or even taking photos of it."

Julian Finney/Getty Images

The art world and the tennis world have not traditionally overlapped much. That's changing. Former World No. 1 Venus Williams often speaks about her passion for art. In 2023, Robert Pruitt's portrait of Venus and sister Serena was exhibited at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

ATP pro Reilly Opelka is sponsored by the Tim Van Laere Gallery, which has outlets in Antwerp and Rome and frequently shows tennis-themed artworks. And players such as Amanda Anisimova and Kaja Juvan have both found in their spells off tour that art can be a valuable outlet.

Taylor isn't surprised that the two worlds are aligning more and more. Tennis's place in the cultural consciousness isn't just because of the purely athletic feats of its players, but the aesthetic of the whole world -- from the geometric lines of the court to the flair with which the sport is played.

"I've often heard it said that tennis is one of the more artistic sports," she said. "It's how you play it -- there's so much passion. It's just you, the ball and the court, basically. And when it comes to artwork, it's just you, the brush and the canvas. You're there to experiment and self-explore, and it's the same with tennis.

"And I know that when I think of tennis, there's a lot of movement. It's like when you're painting on the canvas, there's also movement. There's always this flow to it. I think of a shot as a brush stroke, in a sense."

But as someone for whom art provided a way out of tennis, Taylor also thinks that the differences between the two endeavors provide an important potential connection. As she's entered the art world, she's found that the people she encounters might be "a little crazy" -- but they're also a great deal more relaxed than anyone in the tennis world, where focus and discipline are the order of the day, every day.

"The structure in their lives is very different to that of an artist," she said. "From an artist's perspective, you could for a few days without even being able to produce any artwork. But everything is within yourself, in your mind. You're constantly thinking and trying to create ideas in your head."

Taylor found that being able to express herself on canvas provided an outlet she hadn't found in tennis, with its emphasis on keeping emotions on the inside.

"You get to understand another side of yourself," she said. "A side that maybe with tennis you can't find. So much of tennis is about keeping it in. With art, it's about getting it out there. I think a lot of people need to be more comfortable getting their creativity out there and being themselves, even if that's just splashing paint or whatever.

"I do recommend that tennis players, in their free time, do something where they can just express themselves and go wild."

On returning to Wimbledon in her second capacity, Taylor found she had no regrets at all about her first career. In fact, she was most struck by how much she didn't remember: when she walked around the grounds in 2018, she had been so focused on her matches and practises that she hadn't really observed what was around her.

"When I come back here, I'm like -- ah!" she said. "It's really opened my eyes up to what other possibilities are out there."

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