Michael Tyzack was a painter, teacher, and skilled jazz trumpeter who taught at the College of Charleston from 1973 until his death in 2007. Tyzack was among the most distinguished British abstract painters to have settled in the United States in the last part of the 20th Century. He became a revered mentor for many young artists, including Brian Rutenberg, telling them that "without risk, there is no serious painting".

Tyzack said that the most transformative event in his career was winning first prize at the fifth John Moores Liverpool Exhibition in 1965, where the jury chairman was the influential American critic Clement Greenberg. Tyzack's prize painting, Alesso B, was a seductively colored acrylic on canvas. Although apparently completely abstract, it alluded in its title to the Renaissance painter Alesso Baldovinetti's Portrait of a Lady in Yellow, in the National Gallery, a reproduction of which was pinned to Tyzack's studio wall.

Robert Hughes and Norbert Lynton were among other critics to praise Tyzack's work, Lynton supporting him in his first solo show at the Axiom Gallery, London, in 1966. Michael Tyzack was born in Sheffield in 1933 and attended London University’s Slade School of Fine Art, gaining his fine art diploma in 1955. Tyzack had influential teachers at the Slade, among them the Slade Professor William Coldstream, Lucian Freud and William Townsend. In 1956, Tyzack won a French Government Scholarship in Fine Art and left for Paris. When he returned to England after his stay in France, Tyzack spent several months working as a professional jazz trumpeter. Jazz had been a passion from his youth in Sheffield. He admired Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke, but his jazz interests were catholic. The music informed his painted work, as in the acrylic-on-cotton-duck picture Blue Monk (1982), finished as Tyzack heard of the pianist Thelonius Monk's death. The somber blue work reminds us that a psychological, emotional significance underlies its apparent abstraction.

Anyone who knows Tyzack's mature geometrical abstracts could appreciate his respect for the work of such artists as Malevich and Mondrian. More surprising might be his reverence for those natural celebrators Matisse, especially, and Monet. Tyzack spent his 30th birthday seeking admission to Monet's garden at Giverny, only to be turned away because it was closed for renovations. Story had it that he climbed over a wall and lay in the garden among the wisteria and rambling roses drinking his large bottle of champagne. The photographs he took are probably among the last before the renovations took place.

While teaching at such institutions as Cardiff and Hornsey colleges of art, Tyzack continued laying the foundations of a prolific exhibiting career, which would include over 50 British and overseas group show appearances. Among them were "Painting Towards Environment" (Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford, with an Arts Council tour, 1964), "New Shapes of Colour" (Stedlijk Museum, Amsterdam, with European tour, 1966) and the controversial "Documenta 4" (Kassel, 1968). In addition, he had over 20 solo exhibitions. His first solo show after moving to the US was at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington in 1973.

A serious car accident in the 1980s led to long and painful months, stretching into years of slow recovery. When he returned to his art, Tyzack exhibited a series of Small Nocturnes, drawings in mixed media on paper. In 1989 he went back to his diamond motif, which had begun with his painting Kremlin (1961). In 2001, it dominated his solo exhibition at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston. Appropriate to the Moment, a title appropriated from the teachings of Zen Buddhism, comprised 18 works completed between 1989 and 2001. Tyzack's color variations were so subtle that sometimes they did not seem to be there. "Pessimists see an absence of color, optimists the potential presence of color," he said.

Michael Tyzack’s work resides in more than three dozen international public collections, including the Tate Gallery, the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Kunstmuseum in Berne, and the South Carolina Arts Commission.

Tyzack retired as Chair of the College of Charleston's art department in 2005, when he became Emeritus Professor of Painting. He retained a studio on the campus and continued to teach, where his lust for life, generosity, quintessential Britishness, dry wit and aphorisms were appreciated.

Until a few weeks before his death, Tyzack continued to play jazz with his Dixieland band Authenticity. On trips to England he would jam with his guitarist son Ben, who has a recording group, the Spikedrivers.