Page 27 - Studio International - October 1965

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external world would mean artistic suicide. For Haig's personal emerges. which is the direct reflection of his
art is inextricably bound up with the landscape and now maturing spirit.
history of the Border Country where he was to settle. Returning to Bemersyde after the war, he found an
Bemersyde lies above the deep gorge of the Tweed, environment which enabled his sensibility to burgeon.
known as 'Walter Scott's View·. Here, and in the One of the first things he observed was that the land­
immediate environs. the landscape is rich in every kind scape forms appeared more and more to conform to
of natural phenomenon. Through its fields and copses the requirements of his vision. The pattern of shape
canter the ghosts of Border myth and legend. Seen and colour resolved itself into larger and more expressive
under the aqueous light of the Scottish sky, it offers intervals and proportions. Nature's geometry assumed
to the poetic eye an inexhaustible variety of visual a new monumental significance under the changing
excitement and subtle evocation. This land has been light of the northern sky. Fields, woods, hedges shed
the abiding source of his art, colour and lyric inspiration. their natural aspect and took on the properties of art as
Haig's early paintings reveal his innate predilections colour, mass and line. Boundaries dissolved and re­
towards abstraction. Accepting the flatness of the formed to constitute new and arresting organic
picture plane, he disposes his forms in a simple plani­ relationships. Apart from an occasional flower or figure
metric mosaic abstracted from observed data. Optical motif, this was Haig's materia poetica during the decade
space is adapted to the conventions of his style. Each between 1947 and 1957.
1 element of the picture is flattened and trimmed to the Haig has always been an inveterate draughtsman.
The Hill 2. 1964
26 X 36 1n. requirements of the total ·gestalt'. Stability is imparted Every day, virtually. he brings back to his studio some
Collection: The Artist to the pictorial structure by a hidden geometrical new pictorial material. Most of it is left lying about.
2 framework as though the self-contained space had From time to time, however, a particular sketch is
Hume Castle 1965 congealed to fix the forms in permanent relationship. propped up on an easel for further consideration; only
28x36in.
Collection: The Artist Colour and tone are functionally integrated with the occasionally does he begin a picture at once after
3 design and, in addition, operate as elements of surface returning to his studio. Everything from these forays
The Seagull 1963-64 pattern. Although he is still strongly under the influence is potentially valuable; part of the material is imme­
28 X 36 In.
Collection: Colonel Eric Penn of the Euston Road group, something essentially diately assimilated and transformed creatively and
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