Name Sylvia Tait | ||
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Sylvia Tait (born March 20, 1932) is a Canadian abstract painter and print-maker.
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Life
Tait attended the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School of Art and Design from 1949 to 1953, completing an undergraduate degree. Her instructors included Arthur Lismer, Jacques de Tonnancour, Marian Scott, Eldon Grier, Gordon Webber and William Armstrong.
Tait married artist and poet Eldon Grier in 1954. He had long-standing connections in Mexico (including with Diego Rivera) and they spent extended periods in San Miguel de Allende in the late 1950s. The couple moved to British Columbia in 1968 and Tait set up her studio in West Vancouver.
Exhibitions and Influences
Tait has exhibited in Canada, Mexico and Ecuador since the 1950s. In Vancouver, the Bau-Xi Art Gallery has regularly had shows of her work since 1977 and in 2011 the West Vancouver Museum exhibited a retrospective of Tait's art work "as a tribute to her career." Among her influences were the Abstract Expressionism art movement and classical music. Although Tait's early paintings were representational, her mature and current works on canvas and on paper are purely abstract, showing a complex use of layered high key colour. Tait's paintings have been described as "visual image-like poetry, using colour instead of words." Tait's work Aquascapes was installed at the West Vancouver Pool in 2004, and fully restored in 2013. In 2014, Tait exhibited in the West Vancouver Museum's exhibition "The And of the Land" alongside other B.C. artists such as Lawren Harris, Jack Shadbolt, and Takao Tanabe.
Publications
Tait collaborated with Grier and John Huberman in the design and illustration of several books, including: