Sylvia Tait
Sylvia Tait (born March 20, 1932) is a Canadian abstract painter and print-maker. Career. 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. She held her first solo exhibition in 1953 at the YMCA in Montreal, presenting semi-abstract portrait and still life oil paintings. 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. In Mexico Tait participated in several group exhibitions and presented two solo exhibitions at the Instituto Allende in 1959 and 1960. The couple moved to British Columbia in 1968 and Tait set up her studio in West Vancouver. She had a number of solo exhibitions in the 1970s and received awards. In the 1980s, Tait created sets and costumes for opera, dance and theatre including, "Amahl and the Night Visitors", in 1980, "The Stand", Anna Wyman Dance, in 1987, and "Thisness", a mono-drama by Istvan Anhalt, in 1986 . She also won competitions for art in public spaces in 2004 and 2005. Her work is in many public gallery collections such as the Vancouver Art Gallery and Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. She was a member of the Canadian Society of Graphic Art (1963), and the Malaspina Printmakers, Vancouver, BC (1978). Exhibitions and influences. Tait has exhibited in Canada, Mexico and Ecuador since the 1950s. Since 1977, Tait has been represented by the Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver, BC. Tait's work "Aquascapes" was installed at the West Vancouver Pool in 2004, and fully restored in 2013. Influences. 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 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." Publications. Tait collaborated with Grier and John Huberman in the design and illustration of several books, including: