Page 35 - Studio International - May 1965

Michael Tain worked for a while for a shipping line in Glasgow. at all costs. it is an act of courage to paint with the materials of
painting murals. designing furniture and floor covering for Corot and the patience of Cezanne. Yet for Michael Tain a painting
staterooms. the time came to move South and chase the elusive has a beginning. an intermediate process of undercoats. scum­
patron in London. bling and over painting. Always the end is the liberation of the
The pursuit seemed endless. He worked in all mannner of jobs light. not only the light of the sun diffused in every atmosphere
from none of which the profession of artist debarred him. Bar­ but the interior light of the painting itself. In the latest canvases
tender. labourer. waiter. and others that were sufficient only to of the palest blue vibrating with the subtlest hatchings of tones.

Gwdecca keep his ribs apart from his backbone-he tackled them all or the sea and the sky shimmer in the slightest of difference of
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none. Sometimes the times were hard. almost suicidal. Yet weight above and below the horizon line of the baroque buildings
painting and drawing were as essential as the daily bread. Klee of the Giudecca or the bright stucco fronts and the archaic shapes
was a great trendsetter for him in those years before the new of the fishing boats of Chioggia. This is the tightrope of painting
American painting had been seen in London by English students when realism is subtracted to the extreme point of recognition
but he soon found that the linear pattern and visual punning of and the atmosphere almost obliterates all but the most striking
the Swiss master was drawing and not painting in its essence silhouettes of the forms. But as poetry will always employ the
and was therefore not for him. words that serve also for description so the art of Michael Tain
For of all things Michael Tain is a painter. in love with his employs the shape of allusive motives to provide the visual
material as it serves him but never allowing it to be its own similes in the sweeping passages of light.
director. 1-1 is early paintings show as now an allegiance to the Two overriding principles guide the artist's method of working:
forms of nature. About the time of his first one-man show in one. to preserve the surface tension and two. never to violate the
London. in 1959 at the now defunct Parkway Gallery near picture plane. In the first. where so many 'pure· abstract painters
Regent's Park. his canvases revealed the vertical stresses of fail. the resu'lts are not achieved by formula. Each painting is a
reeds. trees and flowers. The Redfern also hung a canvas. struggle in which the various elements are worked on in
Michael Tain has never. as he says. 'hawked his stuff around successive stages until the final. finishing climax is reached. This.
the galleries·. The Parkway exhibition happened by invitation for the artist. is the testing time when all previous stages stand
through a friend showing the director an example of his work. or fall in the whole denouement. The period of days from priming
John Whibley became interested in his work when he was asked to the last fleeting highlights can be for him an exhausting and
to frame some paintings a collector had bought from the artist worrying physical endurance test. This is painting the hard way
and he has put on two one-man shows. At the second. in 1963. but in the end the most durable way of all.
the whole show was sold out in one and a half hours. Film star For Michael Tain art has still a magnificent relationship with life.
Peter Sellers. night club owner Leslie Linder and amateur jockey He is appalled by what he calls the ·cannibalism· of art. when
Sir William Piggot-Brown have each several Tains. Manu­ painters are devouring not only their elders but even the infants
facturer Hyman Solomon commissioned a view of Greenwich of a few years· fame. when art is going to art for inspiration and
from the Thames that hangs in the board room of the factory on not to life itself. His own attitude towards subject is away from
the Reach. His paintings have been seen on the continent-in concentration on one alone. Although his concern is for light
Monte Carlo. in Dusseldorf ar.d in Holland. and space he will paint the female nude with a sensual delight
Since 1952 Michael Tain has travelled frequently to France. in the radiance of a white skin that seems to cover the torso with
especially in the summer. By car he has visited the Massif Central. a transparent mist rather than reflect the sunlight from a solid
the Camargue and the beloved Midi at St. Tropez. These trips. envelope of flesh.
drenched with sunlight. have remained with him as saturations To allow this liberation of the light. the horizon is widening and
of the retina. cisterns of memory from which he has drawn the the sky is rising. From the already increasing scale of the painting
water of many paintings. Last year a stay in Venice with visits to supports. it seems as if the world is opening its larger vistas to
several of the islands was a harvest of which some of the fruits Michael Tain. It is a world of magical mistiness. of a withdrawn
are visible in the current show at the John Whibley Gallery. pearly ambience that evokes that expectation we feel acutely
Now when art is created for art's sake only and novelty pursued when. waking. we open our eyes. ■
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