BILL SCOTT
THE LANDSCAPE IN A STILL LIFE
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A City Square, oil on canvas, 32 x 42”, 2007
BILL SCOTT THE LANDSCAPE IN A STILL LIFE Paintings, Pastels, Prints & Watercolors: 1977 – 2017 RIDER UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY
Thursday, September 28 – Sunday, October 29, 2017
OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, September 28, 5 – 7 p.m.
ARTIST’S TALK
Thursday, October 5, 7 p.m.
GALLERY INFORMATION
Tuesday to Thursday • 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. Sunday • noon - 4 p.m. Professor Harry I. Naar, director Front cover: A Brief Moment of Titillation, oil on canvas, 39 x 43”, 2008 Back cover: Three Sopranos at the Beach, oil on canvas (triptych), 38 x 90”, 1984 Photography: Joseph Painter, studio photograph: Paul Rider Catalog design: Dax Finley, artwork © Bill Scott 2017 This exhibition is organized in cooperation with Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York This exhibition is funded in part by a grant from the Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Department of State.
A Conversation with Bill Scott
and Harry I. Naar, Professor of Fine Arts & Gallery Director, Rider University Harry I. Naar - What was your early childhood like? Did you display an early interest in the visual arts?
HN - What role, if any, did your family play once they recognized that you displayed an interest in the visual arts?
Bill Scott - My family lived in suburban Philadelphia. My maternal grandmother lived nearby. Her parents had been opera singers, and in her youth, she had been an actress. She sorely missed living in the spotlight, and I think used me as a surrogate for her longed-for adoring audience. I was frequently taken into town with her to attend plays and hear musical performances. This started when I was only four years old, and it was a difficult exercise for me in learning how to sit still, keep quiet, remain alert and appear appreciative. Coming in and out of Philadelphia, we’d always drive by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I once pointed to it and asked, “What’s in there?” I still remember the dismissive tone of her response. “Oh,” she replied, “it’s just pictures.” I didn’t know it then, but now I wonder if that moment may have piqued my later interest in painting which is – perhaps not coincidentally for me – a solitary endeavor. And I also sometimes wonder, had it not been thrust upon me when I was so little, if I might now feel more wonderment for the performing arts.
BS - My paternal grandmother, who died when I was ten, had been raised in Camden, New Jersey, and in the 1880s and 1890s, lived on the same block where her uncle Jake ran a pharmacy. He occasionally painted and had known a lot of artists, including Thomas Eakins and Walt Whitman. Hanging in my grandmother’s house were some of Jake’s darkly colored landscapes. To her his paintings seemed to embody his entire soul, and by still having them, he remained a palpable and endearing presence in her life. Although he was long dead, Jake made painting seem like an important thing to do, and his paintings became like talismans to me.
At home and in school, I drew all the time. At five and six, my best friend and I made crayon and pencil drawings of Fred Flintstone and Mary Poppins. When I was a little older, I began making drawings of actual things and events: my house, my parents at the dining room table and so on. I attended a small Quaker school that to me was like being in paradise. Elizabeth Geary Davison, the wonderful art teacher, showed us reproductions of paintings by Bonnard and coached us to paint with oils. Fifth grade was the best because each week our homeroom teacher taught us about a different artist. My parents had no paintings hanging and the only living painters I knew about were Norman Rockwell, Andrew Wyeth, Grandma Moses and Picasso. It never occurred to me, however, that being a painter was something someone could actually still do. I thought it was something that people had only done in the past.
I never felt anyone really expected I would be able to do anything well, and I suspect they were glad when they realized I was interested in painting. My parents and my father’s sister were not especially interested in the visual arts, but were extremely supportive. Individually, they took me to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and to Washington, D.C., to see the National Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection. I remember once going with my aunt to New York to see a Francis Bacon exhibition. I was the weird guy in school because I collected postcards of paintings as excitedly as other guys collected baseball cards. I met a very old portrait painter, Agnes Allen, who lived and painted in her studio on the top floor of a building on Walnut Street. I visited her periodically to see her paintings, which she always made on commission. This made me think of painting as somewhat parallel to doing homework. I wrongly assumed that the end result had to be pre-envisioned, and that all painting decisions were made before the brush even touched the canvas. Concurrently, I attended Saturday etching classes at the Philadelphia College of Art, and in 1972, I enrolled in its summer program. In walking around town, I started noticing commercial art galleries. At one I saw an exhibition of Jane Piper paintings. I liked them and wrote a letter asking the artist if I might see her studio. I liked the sense of pleasure her paintings exuded, but even more I admired her thoroughness and intense seriousness while making a painting. Contrary to Miss Allen’s ambition, Jane wasn’t painting commissions or creating an image to match someone else’s standard. In hindsight, I intuited from her that a painting is best made without a preimagined end. I’ve been told that in my desire to meet artists, I was actually creating a surrogate family. My father knew what I was doing and gently teased, “Whether or not you like them, God gave you your family. Be grateful you are allowed to choose your friends.”
Left: Along the River, watercolor and gouache on paper, 9 x 13 ½”, 1989 Right: Seated Figure, pastel on paper, 19 ¾ x 25 ½”, 1977
HN - You graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1978. Why did you enroll at PAFA? Were there any professors whom you felt played a role in your development? BS - I attended high school a few blocks from PAFA. Sometimes I skipped study hall and walked down the street to see the PAFA exhibitions. At one of the Annual Student Exhibitions, I saw wonderful figure paintings by Susan Headley Van Campen, and because of them, I decided I wanted to attend PAFA. It was a long time ago and my feelings have changed when thinking now about some of my teachers. Although I didn’t care at all for his egocentric personality, I think Morris Blackburn was one of my most helpful instructors. I don’t know if it was his intent, but I learned from him visual ways that helped me solve some of my painting problems when I was alone in my studio. Sadly, he was also the caricature of a man I never wanted to become, and that was an important lesson in itself. The hard-edge abstractionist Mavis Pusey taught once in a while as a replacement for Will Barnet. She was unlike anyone else I’d met there and not at all self-aggrandizing. She was engaging and clear in how she interpreted and encouraged one to see color, shape and edge. Ben Kamihira, with whom I later became friendly, invited me to his studio several times a week to let me see how his paintings progressed day by day. Although his work was stylistically very different from Jane Piper’s, he was closest to Jane in his fearlessness to constantly change, revise and risk failure in the course of making paintings. Jimmy Lueders, who taught still life and figure painting, talked with me about everything except painting. He was, nevertheless, always encouraging and bought two of my still lifes, which meant a lot to me then and means more to me now. The painters who let me see their works in progress over a course of time were the ones from whom I learned the most. It’s an approach to teaching that I like, as it relies on being alert to the visual and not so much on talking. The artists who most inspired my work, however, were not my PAFA teachers, but the artists who I met outside of school.
HN - What were you painting while at PAFA? BS - Until the middle of my fourth year at PAFA, I painted mostly nudes and clothed figures in classes held in the open studios. The models posed for two or three weeks at a time and I painted one in the morning, another in the afternoon and a third in the evening class. At home during the summertime, I did several large figure paintings for which my mother posed. In my free time at school, I made a series of paintings and pastels of people I knew, like Seated Figure (1977). In my last semester, I was finally assigned a studio, where I painted more figures, but focused mainly on still lifes. Still Life (1977) is the first painting I did there. Following the way I had organized my time in the open studio, I worked on one painting each morning, another in the afternoon and a third in the evening. I ended up staying a fifth year at PAFA, and that was when I made the nine-color silkscreen, Still Life at Night (1979). I soon quit figure painting. Professional models were expensive, and it proved an unreliable gamble to trade posing time with other painter friends. Unfortunately, a few years after leaving PAFA, I destroyed almost all my figure paintings.
Top: Still Life at Night, silkscreen in nine colors, sheet: 24 ¼ x 22 ½”, image: 21 x 19 ½”, 1979
HN - I know that Joan Mitchell was important in your development. How did this come about? Was she instrumental in directing you toward abstraction? BS - When I was in high school, I enjoyed drawing people. I especially loved Alice Neel’s figure paintings, so in March of 1974, I went to the Whitney Museum of American Art to see a solo exhibition of her work. An exhibition of Joan Mitchell’s paintings had literally just opened on another floor of the Whitney, so I was able to see both. I was 17 years old and, unfortunately, didn’t yet understand Joan’s work. Thanks to a travel award from PAFA, six years later I was in Paris. Whether I was taking a walk along the Seine or looking out a window it all looked to me as if I was inside a painting by Albert Marquet. I was alone a lot and painted small flower bouquets like Flowers II (1980). Soon after arriving, I met a painter my age and he invited me to paint in his studio. I painted Paris Window, rue Lucien-Sampaix (1980) there. A friend of his told me an exhibition of Joan’s paintings was opening soon at a nearby gallery. I saw it and fell in love with her work. By chance, she was there at the same time I stopped in. Although I felt afraid of almost everyone in the world, for some reason at that moment, I lacked all fear in approaching her. A few days later, she invited me to visit her at home. She walked me around her garden and showed me her studio and all her new paintings. I returned a year later and lived and painted at her place for the summer. I still loved her work, but was not as in love with her. We did not get along so well. We became friendlier a few years later, and I returned. At that point, she gave me a key to her studio and cleared her work from one wall. I painted there during the day before she came in after dinner to work on her paintings throughout the night. I was outside a lot, too, and in response to the surrounding landscape, painted numerous watercolors and gouaches including, River Landscape, Untitled and Along the River (all 1989). It was a gift to be able to see Joan’s paintings everyday and to see how she changed them daily. For several years I was overly influenced by her brushy application of paint and her preference for triptych formats. Some of the paintings I did in that state of mind include the triptych Three Sopranos at the Beach (1984), and The Landscape in a Still Life (1987). As she did with almost everyone, Joan shook me to my core in a way no one ever had before or since. I am glad I knew her when I did, and wonderful and generous as she could be, I’m relieved she is now only in my past. HN - At some point you came to admire the work of Berthe Morisot, an Impressionist painter known for depicting family scenes and landscapes. What attracted you to her work? BS - I first saw Morisot’s work in a few museums and wanted to know about her just out of curiosity. I didn’t start with any sort of plan, but I ended up meeting two of her grandsons and writing several times about her. I’ve also participated in organizing exhibitions of her paintings. I love what I call the “aliveness” of her work; her juxtaposition of color and drawing and the restraint in her expressiveness. Her grandsons owned two canvases depicting a subject she painted several times: a cherry tree. In her own estimation, these paintings stood with her very best. But it perturbed me that I wasn’t quite able to understand either painting in the way I’d hoped. So over the past eight years, I’ve made an ongoing series of paintings and color intaglio prints loosely based on these, including the painting The Fourth Cherry Tree (2012) and the color print The Cherry Tree III (2015).
River Landscape, watercolor on paper, 11 ¼ x 15”, 1989
Bottom: Paris Window, rue Lucien-Sampaix, oil on canvas, 32 x 39 ½”, 1980
Left: The Cherry Tree III, aquatint with drypoint and etching in five colors on Rives BFK paper, paper: 30 x 22 1⁄2”, plate: 24 x 12 1⁄2”, 2015, Edition of 33 impressions printed by Cindi R. Ettinger. Published by the artist Right: The Fourth Cherry Tree, oil on canvas, 65 x 34”, 2012
HN - What other artists have played an important role in developing and forming your artistic vision, and why? BS - When I was younger there were a lot of artists who were my heroes and whose works I tried to emulate. In the last 15 or 20 years, that desire to emulate has more or less evaporated and no longer lingers in my thoughts when I’m painting. I forget who first said it, but I agree that, “one works for two or three living friends, and for others one has never met or who are dead.” At this point in life, my friends are the artists whose works I’m most interested to see. Since 1999, I’ve made intaglio prints with Cindi R. Ettinger, an artist and master printer in Philadelphia. The first etchings I made with her were improvisational, but when I started working on a larger scale and with color, I soon learned that I needed to plan from the beginning. Each of the intaglio prints in this show is based on one of my paintings. One of the earliest complex prints is Aquarium (2008), and the most recent is Late October (2016). The unexpected benefit of working with Cindi is that now, when I hit an impasse and don’t know how to proceed, I ask myself what I would do if the painting were an etching. This first appears as the sinewy black, etchinglike lines in A Lingering Grief II (1998–2003). When I was a student, I occasionally posed for other students. About 15 years ago, Scott Noel asked me to pose for a series of portraits and figure paintings he was doing at that time. A few years ago I posed for two younger artists, Aaron Lubrick and Tom Walton. The opportunity to observe other artists as they paint is pleasurable for me. I often learn a lot by seeing what colors they use, which brands of paint, what brushes, and so on. HN - How do you begin a painting? What is the impetus for you to create a particular image? Do you work from a drawing, or do you create an image in a more spontaneous and intuitive way? BS - I try to approach each painting on my easel with an empty mind. It sounds like a contradiction because concurrently, I need to be completely alert. I discontinue working on a canvas until I know again what to do with it. It helps me always to have several paintings in progress at any one time; I work on only one at a time, but I can quickly go from one to another. I usually draw with paint directly on the canvas, but for a few years I drew small oil pastels of the flowers and plants in my tiny backyard garden. These types of lines, including Corsage (1996) and Garden Shoots (1998), echo in my paintings. I also find renewable inspiration in the shapes of the houses, trees and sky visible from my studio window. In the studio I have plants, dead branches and fake flowers – all these appear as the shapes and lines in my paintings. A Brief Moment of Titillation (2008) was based on shapes in my backyard, and unlike other paintings, happened fairly rapidly without much reworking. I think that is why it appears a bit more fluid than the other works. I work on most of the paintings off and on for at least six months. The longer I work, the more angular the forms and drawing become. Yvon’s Garden in Céré-la-Ronde (2008–12) is a painting that I completed and then extensively reworked four years later. That long of a time span is unusual for me, but I realized I felt uncomfortable every time I looked at the painting. So, I put it back on the easel. I long to feel calm. The moment when my painting exudes that feeling to me is the point where I try to stop. The most recent painting, A Garden in the Studio, feels more open-ended to me, but that is probably only because it is the newest one.
Top: Aquarium, etching with engraving, drypoint, and chine collé on Rives BFK paper, paper: 23 ¾ x 22”, plate: 18 x 18”, 2008, printed by Cindi R. Ettinger, published by the artist
Bottom: Late October, etching with aquatint in four colors on Rives BFK paper, paper: 22 ½ x 30”, plate: 14 ½ x 24”, 2016, printed by Cindi R. Ettinger, published by the artist
Still Life, oil on canvas, 32 x 30“, 1977
HN - Your paintings are composed of strong colors. What influences you to select a particular set of colors? Do you know when you begin a painting what your color palette will be? Do you make changes? BS - Except for when I work on a color etching, I don’t have a predetermined plan for what colors I’ll use. I’m sometimes afraid my color might be too strident, but I can be strident as a person, too, so I think of the color as a reflection of that part of my personality. I was inspired by a 1976 Hans Hofmann exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The clarity and intensity of his yellows, blues, greens and pinks prompted me to use more vibrant colors. I think using that type of color more and more naturally led me away from being a strictly representational painter. The entire process is about changes. HN - In looking at the abstract paintings of de Kooning, we can see his direct connection to reality. He talked about “seeing a glimpse,” a glimpse of reality. In your paintings, which are abstract, we can see shapes, forms, and open and closed lines that seem to reference reality. What role do nature and reality or a “glimpse” of reality play in your creative process? BS - Every mark I make when I first begin to work on a blank canvas can feel fairly arbitrary. People who are rooted in a cause-and-effect way of thinking are frustrated by the way I talk about painting because, I suspect, it’s too open ended for them. As for the paintings seeming like a “glimpse,” A City Square (2007) and Fitler Square Nocturne (2014) are like glimpses of a small park near my house. I see my paintings as parallel to the fleeting, impermanent images one envisions in their mind’s eye when reading poetry, sometimes representational, sometimes abstract. Usually one or the other is emphasized in my own mind by the titles I choose. HN - To me, your paintings are composed of blocks of colors, dashes, open and closed forms, and an array of calligraphic marks. In Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky writes about the analogy between colors, shapes, and lines and the spiritual connection to music. Julian Bell has written, “Just as sound can relate to feelings, and feelings to color so too painting can relate to music.” What role does music play in your creative process? BS - I would stand in the rain to hear certain singers whose work I like very much. I often listen to music when I paint and have occasionally used song lyrics as the titles for paintings. However, for me the music doesn’t translate to exact visual imagery. Music acts as a magnet on me because of the way I feel upon hearing it. I gravitate toward music that appears joyous, but which deep down is bittersweet and rather despondent. I know it contradicts the appearance of my paintings for those people who see them only as happy, but those are feelings that propel me to paint.
HN - Artists have always sought to express aspects of their identity and their heritage, but this has been especially true since the mid20th century. What are some of the elements in this exhibition that reflect or relate to your identity? How has your work changed through the years? BS - It’s a timely question, but one for which I have no satisfactory response. I want my paintings to embody the calmness I spoke of, and if it’s even possible to do in painting, to exude kindness. I’m not thinking at all about myself when I paint. The best thing of all when I paint is that I feel no fear whatsoever. Painting certainly doesn’t exist without lots of frustration and disappointments. Feelings of failure are an integral and inextricable part of the process. I’m not an academic, and I definitely heed pleasure more trustingly than I heed intellect. I love that W. H. Auden wrote, “Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.” At the start of this interview, I mentioned how, under the direction of one of my grandmothers, I reluctantly and somewhat torturously learned to sit still, keep quiet, remain alert and appear appreciative. The gift of having painted for so long is that in looking at my paintings now, I’m finally glad to sit still, not talk and be absolutely present. I’m grateful for the company of the community of the painters I’ve known, but also that I’ve been able to pursue my painting as a solitary endeavor. HN - What do you want the viewer to recognize and discover about your exhibition? BS - I’ve talked a lot here about other artists, influences and inspiration. When I was younger, I wanted to somehow connect with the artists whose works inspired me. I naïvely thought inspiration might work like a game of catch. I soon learned I don’t get to throw the ball back to the person who metaphorically threw it to me. I can offer it, but I can’t know or predict where it will land or who, if anyone, might catch it. You don’t get to choose who loves you any more than you are able to pick who responds to your work. For example, I’m sure Berthe Morisot would have had no interest at all in my Cherry Tree paintings. Nevertheless, whenever I see Morisot’s paintings, all I want to do is to run home and paint. Whether or not I’d be interested in what they do, I hope someone who sees my work might also have the impulse to run home and paint.
Fitler Square Nocturne, oil on linen, 36 x 42�, 2014
Untitled, watercolor and gouache on paper, 15 x 11�, 1989
Yvon’s Garden in Céré-la-Ronde, oil on canvas, 51 x 37”, 2008, reworked in 2012
A Garden in the Studio, oil on canvas, 42 x 32�, 2017
Garden Shoots, oil pastel on paper, 14 x 11�, 1998
A Lingering Grief, II, oil over acrylic on paper, 40 x 32�, 1998-2003
Flowers II, oil on canvas, 25 ½ x 21 ¼”, 1980
The Landscape in a Still Life, oil on canvas, 40 x 38�, 1987
Bill Scott was born in 1956 and raised in Haverford, Pennsylvania. He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) from 1974 to 1979. After graduating from PAFA, he worked informally with abstract painter Joan Mitchell at her home in Vétheuil, France. Since 1999, he has made intaglio prints with the C. R. Ettinger Studio. He has produced commissioned etchings for the Print Club of Cleveland as well as the Print Center and Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia. In 2016, Philadelphia’s Cerulean Arts Gallery presented an exhibition of his intaglio prints. Scott is represented by Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, where he has had six solo exhibitions. He has had solo shows elsewhere in New York as well, and in London, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. His work is in public collections at the Asheville Art Museum, North Carolina; British Museum; Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, among others. He taught in the Certificate Program at PAFA, and in 2006, received the institution’s Distinguished Alumni Award. He recently has been a visiting artist at the Kentucky College of Art and Design, Mount Gretna School of Art and the University of Southern Mississippi. Scott lives in Philadelphia.