Bill Scott (artist)

Bill Scott (born 1956 Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania)[1] is a contemporary abstract painter and printmaker who works and lives in Philadelphia. Scott studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from rom 1974 to 1979,[2] and with the painter Jane Piper (1916–1991).[3]

In 1980, while living in Paris on a travel prize, he met the American abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell (1925–1992). In subsequent years he stayed at her home in Vétheuil and painted in her studio. After Mitchell died, he wrote an appreciation of her published in Art in America.[4]

Since 1999 Scott has been making intaglio prints with the C.R. Ettinger Studio[5] and in 2004 was awarded a grant from the Independence Foundation in support of his work in color printmaking.[6] He has made commissioned etchings for the Print Club of Cleveland[1] and for the Print Center and Fleisher Art Memorial, both in Philadelphia. In 2016 an exhibition devoted to his intaglio prints was presented by Philadelphia’s Cerulean Arts Gallery.[7]

His paintings, pastels, and intaglio prints are in public collections including the British Museum,[8] Cleveland Museum of Art,[9] the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,[10] and Woodmere Art Museum.[3] In 2017 Rider University organized an exhibition including 22 of his works dating from 1997 to 2017.

In 1991, in memory of his parents, Scott donated a collection of works on paper by contemporary women artists to Bryn Mawr College.[11] Since 2011 he is a board member and chair of the Collections Committee at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia.

Style

Scott’s artworks blur the boundaries between abstraction and representation. Drawing from both nature and imagination, the paintings are not expressions of tangible realities but rather "ephemeral remembrances".[12] Exploration of color and form stands at the core of Scott’s work, where blocks of color, patterns and line are overlapped to form dynamic compositions that appear visually akin to collage.

The paintings rely on extremely vivid color palettes, applied in fields of color that evoke both urban and pastoral scenes. In this sense, Scott’s work continues the tradition of abstracted landscapes mastered by aestheticist artists such as Whistler.[12] The artist continually turns to flora and fauna for his subjects, stating that "underbrush and floral subjects have long been recurrent-if not paramount-to my painted imagery."[13]

In the past decade many of Scott’s artworks display direct engagement with specific historical paintings by artists of particular significance to his own artistic development such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1914), Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) and Henri Matisse (1869–1954).[13][14] In paintings of the past decade their works imprint themselves directly onto Scott’s own work, whereby he translates formal qualities of these master’s works onto abstract and colorful canvases.[15]

References
  1. "Bill Scott". The Print Club of Cleveland. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  2. "Bill Scott". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  3. "Scott, Bill". Woodmere Art Museum. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  4. 'In The Eye of The Tiger,' Art in America, vol. 83 (March 1995), pp. 70-77.
  5. "Bill Scott". C. R. Ettinger Studio. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  6. "Past Recipients: Arts Fellowships". Independence Foundation. 31 January 2022. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  7. Stan Mir. 'Bill Scott’s Bittersweet Fictions,' Hyperallegic, December 17, 2016, https://hyperallergic.com/345558/bill-scotts-bittersweet-fictions/
  8. "Bill Scott". British Museum. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  9. "The Gray-Green Bottle: Edition". Cleveland Museum of Art. 30 October 2018. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  10. "Bill Scott, "Landscape with Trees III" (2006)". Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 28 December 2014. Retrieved 10 October 2023.
  11. All work in the collection is on the collection website; also see catalog: Beyond Boundaries: Feminine Forms, an exhibition organized by Laurel McLaughlin and Mechella Yezernitskaya at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (September 15, 2017–March 18, 2018) and Bryn Mawr College, September 28, 2017–January 28, 2018)
  12. Rosenfeld, Jason. 'Bill Scott: Refulgence', Bill Scott: Imagining Spring, (New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2016), 5.
  13. Scott, Bill. ‘Artist’s Statement’, Surviving Ourselves, Exhibition Catalogue (Philadelphia: Woodmere Art Museum: 2010), 22.
  14. Stavitsky, Gail. 'Matisse and Contemporary American Art,' in the exhibition catalog, Matisse and American Art, (New Jersey: Montclair Art Museum), February 5–June 18, 2017, pp. 79-88, Scott’s painting, An Aquarium of Flowers reproduced page 88
  15. Zarobell, John. 'Form Reveal’s Art Secret: The Recent Work of Bill Scott,' Bill Scott, (New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2011), 8.

Further reading
  • Gerdts, William. Two Centuries of American Still-Life Painting: The Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs Collection (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2016), pp. 134–136, 280-281.
  • Scott, Bill, 'Artist’s Statement,' Surviving Ourselves, Exhibition Catalogue (Philadelphia: Woodmere Art Museum, 2010), 22.
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