Featured Artist Gordon Scott

Artist Gordon Scott shares his portfolio of lavishly detailed romantic landscapes and mysterious figurative works. Visit his website to learn more about his artistic journey and his work.

 

 

For many years, throughout my artistic practice, l felt a constant need to fulfill a spiritual quest. My disillusionment with the priorities of the modern age was always a key ingredient in shaping my journey. Often, I threw away my brushes and traveled.

 

 

This led to me living for ten years in a remote spiritual community guided by an aged master shaman. This was not in the wilds of the Andes or Kashmir, but the ancient hills of middle England surrounded by the burial mounds of Celtic ancestors.

 

 

It sounds poetic and fanciful of course, but it has worked a miracle in my inner life. After my guide died, l returned to art with an abundant source of inspiration previously unknown to me.

 

 

During my graduate studies at Glasgow School of Art, a climate of artistic debate was fostered. Much of the powerful narrative figurative art in Scotland is social and political in nature. Not many, if any at all, give voice to the mystic vision. This personal debate has stayed with me.

 

 

My narratives are grounded in the real world where the subject is on the edge of a personal transfigurative breakthrough—a call to adventure. I am constantly wondering about how to portray the divine, whatever that may actually be, and l presently lavish realistic detail in my work surrounding it with otherworldly atmosphere.

 

 

Thirty years of portraiture is the foundation where l now explore the sitter as a strange visitor. Painting an angel unawares. The sitter is hidden behind masks and veils, where gesture and context hint at secrets and messages. It is intriguing and far from convention to express personality in the absence of a visible face.

 

 

In landscape, I am drawn to wilderness devoid of human intervention; a place where the sacred may still be glimpsed. This was also a 19th century concern in romantic landscapes suffused with awe. The search for the sublime is a very important imperative for me. I deeply respect the romantic tradition in art, storytelling and poetry.

 

 

There is so much to do and time presses. All the more reason to abide by the age-old mystic advice to simplify your life. Art is the centre from which all my other endeavours radiate. A centre of health and well-being that has much in common with asceticism. I use the best artist materials that I can afford, and canvas and paper are prepared in the traditional manner, a craft in itself.

 

 

Creating is the drive rather than any material concern to sell. Of course, this runs counter to much of the online pressure to share and make it big.

 

 

Experience has shown me that making art is a way of life that informs and guides both maker and viewer. I hold to the conviction of my heart, and so without striving, opportunities present themselves. It is a humbling process.

 

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