Artist Interview: Sylvia Tait
In anticipation of her retrospective solo exhibition Repertoire, Sylvia Tait reflects on the enduring influence of colour and form in her life and artistic career. Repertoire opens on March 22 at Bau-Xi Vancouver and runs through April 5, 2025.
Sylvia Tait, Intrusion. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches, circa 1960s.
On Montreal:
I was born, raised and schooled in Montreal, Quebec, completing four years at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts school of Art & Design. As a young artist I found that the arts community was an extremely close and intermingled community – poets, musicians, dancers and painters, totally involved and engaged together, being creative. That was the art milieux. Painting pictures, writing plays, playing instruments – they were heady times of creativity.
On the draw to and perception of colour:
To me, colour is feelings - relationships between tonalities. This relationship changes our perceptions of colour. Colour is personal and perhaps also cultural. Its relationship with form and structure is important to me as well.
As a young couple my husband, poet Eldon Grier, and I left the red roofs of Quebec and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico where we purchased the revolution-era home of our artist friends Leonard and Reva Brooks. The house had a beautiful artist studio with a fireplace in it, and bullet holes still dotted the outside walls from when Allende once charged down the street on horseback, guns blazing. In Mexico bright, kaleidoscopic colour is all around you, from the painted walls to the warmth and passion of the Mexican people. But the weight of the country’s history is also present, and I feel that it manifests itself as a dark undertone to the brightness of colour. To me this illustrates the nuanced nature of colour - bright colours are not solely reflective of happiness, but carry other qualities such as strength, vibrancy, and power. To me, the relationships between colours when placed together in different ways represent different emotions and energies, the dark and the light and the tonalities between.
Sylvia Tait, Plus Minus 4. Silkscreen print on paper, 26 x 20 inches, circa 1970s.
On the hard-edge (silkscreen) works:
The history of art is defined by timing and the times. Previously my art was free-flowing, active and dense; I started doing hard-edge minimal work when my family and I left Montreal for political reasons and came to Vancouver in 1967 (following the Expo World Fair which had just ended in Montreal). Doing hard-edge works redefined who I was at the time – they were a revolt from post modernism and a new start in time. And they were a contradiction to everything I was doing before. There was a new world philosophy of “less is more” – a famous sentiment coined by the pioneering architect Mies van der Rohe who was a central figure at the time - and it became the philosophy of a whole generation. The discipline of hard-edge, the restriction of colours attracted me - form, structure and colour were of highest importance, putting one colour against another. I did exhibit some of them and They were my secret world of rethinking and re-imagining.
Then, a few years later, I became/returned in part with “more is more” as the times changed.
Sylvia Tait, Woman Table. Mixed media on paper, 26 x 20.5 inches, 1965.
On the black and white works:
I always drew – al fresca and often with Eldon when we travelled anywhere. To draw and make marks is its own language, and working in black and white is like learning a graphic language.
The black and white works were influenced by the Quebec political scene – they are important time pieces. I expressed my own symbols and sense of space and time – they are very energetic and personal. Regarding the Eat Series in particular, I created these works in peacetime, where the only war was in one’s personal agitations and conscience. It was a gluttonous time of plenty. Some works became particularly political and feminist statements as with Woman Table.
Regarding inspiration:
I have always looked largely to France for inspiration – their sensuality of vision, their sensuality of paint.
I love Jean-Paul Riopelle, the Montreal hero – his recent exhibition at the Audain Art Museum was masterful. The dynamism, the heart and soul, the unique and uniquely Canadian vision - the energy! He made me see the incredible energy a landscape could have. I feel he is the best painter even today.
Sylvia Tait, A String Quartet. Acrylic on archival paper, 29.75 x 41.5 inches, 2025.
On the nature of a retrospective exhibition:
There are so many different stages in life and you end up being so many different people. This show represents me as I was during many times in my life. Freedom of mind, and consequently of painting, changes with age, energy and spirit. The saying “you can’t go home again” rings very true – you are never the same artist, always changing, always different.
-Sylvia Tait, 2025
The artist at her North Vancouver home, 2025.