Practice
Scott is primarily a painter focused on the use of oils, but also employs a wide range of liquid, dry and digital media for painting and drawing. His practice is varied but with a bias towards the representational, incorporating traditional painting techniques and aesthetics with a contemporary sensibility informed equally by fine-art tradition, popular culture and personal mythology. He often uses iconography, melodrama and implied narrative to provoke an emotional response.
His influences are many and varied; some of his most recurrent influences include Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, James Gleeson and David Lynch.
He practiced as a graffiti-artist before studying design and fine art at Claremont School of Art and Design and at Curtin University School of Art. After a long hiatus, he has recently returned to full-time arts practice out of a studio in Perth, Western Australia.
Conceptual Space
Art could be described as a window on the collective psyche of humanity, through which we may view the state of our cultural progress - our desires, distractions, fears and fascinations.
If we were to stand at the window of my own creative domain, cup our hands around our eyes and lean in against the glass, we might see a darkened room. Not completely dark - there is a lamp there in the corner - spilling warm, yellow light across the walls, up onto the ceiling and down onto a well-loved armchair. We see a figure in the chair, reclining under the glow of the lamp - eyes fallen shut, breathing softly, maybe on the edge of dreaming. In the figure’s lap, a book - something beautiful on the cover, half obscured by sleeping fingers.
Now let our gaze drop to the sleeper's legs, down to the floor where the lamplight weakens and further out across the room to the far corner where the lamplight cannot reach at all. The darkness there confounds scrutiny, but hold a moment and let’s fix our dilated pupils on those turbid shadows. Something coalesces there - some terrible texture and form - a threat. The air seems thicker there, deep and distressing.
Let’s look back now, to the middle of the room, where light meets darkness in a strange kind of stalemate. There is potential there, reminiscent of dawn and of dusk, the pregnant atmosphere of transitional spaces, of doorways, elevators, fog and mist. The hyperbole of the zealot and the sweet mundanity of a peaceful existence. The atmosphere there is thick enough to support life. If we were to throw out a handful of seeds, one or two might find purchase in the mist and bare weird fruit.
This conceptual space is where I like to wander - and like a tourist, bring back artefacts for show and tell.