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Baytown Sun Article #1
May 1991

“Fish gotta swim... Tauch has to paint”

Albert Tauch never tires of painting. At 87, the well-known Baytown artist still creates the traditional scenes of waterways and oil fields in this area. He also likes to try new things, like abstracts and comic animal paintings.

There are people who live for their work, live for love, even live to eat. Take away their passion and they'll waste away as surely as if starving.

Albert Tauch lives to paint.

At 87, his fingers are well-worn from clutching his brushes for so many years. Paint engrained under his nails and in the creases of his fingers will probably go with him to the grave, and rightfully SO.

The artist's life has been painting and he still captures on canvas the moments of life that Baytonians recognize arid respond to — a crane taking flight over Cedar Bayou, the Goose Creek oil fields, and shrimp boats at Kemah.

For a time, he lost that part of his life. The nursing home where he lived was forced by state regulations to put a stop to his painting, he said. Tauch has moved to a small private-care facility, at home n a log cabin, located on 10 scenic acres tucked away in the heart of Baytown .

He can look out any window and see pastures, woods, ducks and horses. Once again he watches the sun go up and down and hears the birds.

The cabins owner and manager, Barbara Faircloth, is preparing a portion of the long bad porch as Tauch's new studio. Though the partitions that will protect the new studio from the elements are not yet there, Tauch has already made that part of the porch his own. His brushes, canvases, his sketching materials, his works in progress are on the shelves.

Though not confined to a wheelchair, he pushes one for support while walking.

"I can't stand up without holding on to something. I just sort of fall over," said Tauch. "So I push this and it gives me somewhere to sit when I get to where I'm going,"

On his porch he sits, watches his surroundings and paints for long hours.

"It's not really a studio," he said, "and it won't be air-conditioned, so I won't be able to paint when it's too hot. But if you want to paint badly enough, you'll paint anywhere."

Born in Flatonia, Tauch traveled with his family to Louisiana and Arkansas before coming back to Texas in a covered wagon.

He followed his family to Goose Creek , got a job at the Exxon refinery and, in 1927, settled in Pelly . He married a member of a pioneer Cove family and lived on Yupon Street for nearly 50 years, working at Exxon as a sign painter, then coming home to paint some more.

His interest in art, he said, began with a fascination for the Scripps-Howard news service logo which pictured a lighthouse. His first paintings, he said, were copies of that logo and light houses continue to be a favorite theme for his works throughout the years.

Tauch served in the Navy Seabees during World War II, adding the sights and experiences he lived during that time to his list of subjects for painting.

Though the passage of years has brought changes to his lifestyle and health, adaptation is the key for Tauch's continued ability. The Tauch trademark, an imaginative choice and blend of colors, remains constant.

His muscles and arthritic joints will no longer cooperate for work on large canvases or tiny detail work, so he works on smaller canvas and with perhaps more impressionistic style than ever before. His scenic paintings still, as always, are recognizable. His favorite topics for work are still the Gulf Coast he knows — the oilfields, woods and waterways of Baytown , Coves of Clear Lake.

His fans' favorites continue to be historical renditions of Red Hill (near Tabbs Bay and site of Baytown's newly approved marina) and paintings of the oil well fire staged for John Wayne's movie, "The Hell fighters."

Occasionally he embarks on a new road— a series of comic animal paintings, some abstracts and portraits of people he knows or of historical figures. Nearing 90, the artist has come home again in a sense. He is excited about his new home, new friends and always excited to find new subjects to paint.

His latest favorite, a real challenge for those arthritic fingers, is a rendition of how he sees the finished Fred Hartman Bridge , which spans the area he once painted in the oil boom days.

Tauch is happy once again. Happy to be painting, happy to have friends to talk to, argue with and kid around with and, most of all, happy to be somewhere he gets good ice cream regularly.

"If I can get ice cream and paint," he said, "that's really all I need."

 

Source: Fish gotta swim... Tauch has to paint by Jane Howard, the Baytown Sun . May 17, 1991 , page 2-B