Page 26 - Studio International - October 1965

Lord Haig

1 by T. Elder Dickson

2
Haig's position in the spectrum of art is easier to
identify than to define. From the outset of his career
as a painter, although irresistibly drawn to the beauties
of landscape, he realised that the forms of art are not
given but must be shaped by the artist under the
pressure of inner experience. And although his first
gropings for a style of his own tended towards a
strict formalism, it was not until 1957 that he began
rapidly to move towards total abstraction.
The transition was not lightly achieved. By tempera­
ment, Haig is highly sensitive to poetic atmosphere.
His responses are sharp and deeply felt. They are
intensely interfused with primal memories and profound
personal affections. Trapped by his own romanticism,
he realised that if he was to come to terms with the
other part of himself, which aspired to clear classical
definition, he must control his lyrical impulsiveness by
the strict discipline of pure form.
Inevitably, he turned towards painters like Klee and
Pasmore. who seemed to have mastered the problem
which now confronted him. For several years from
about 1957, he painted numerous pure abstracts, which
had no conscious link with external reality or real
situations. The result of this excursion, however. was
paradoxical: it revealed that for him there could be no
final commitment to abstraction; that to reject the
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