BILL SCOT T LE AF AND LINE
March 15 to April 28, 2018
HOLLI S TAG GART GALLER I ES 521 W 26th Street 7th Floor New York, NY 10001
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Foreword It is difficult to fathom that this is our seventh solo exhibition of Bill Scott’s work. This long and pleasurable relationship is testimony not only to the gallery’s continued faith in and admiration of Scott’s painting, but also to his uncanny ability to evolve as an artist. With each new offering from his studio, he reveals the breadth of his potential. His compositions appear at once completely spontaneous and intentionally controlled, revealing the paradox of his unique talent and his seasoned hand. Inspired as always by the world he sees around him, the paintings in Leaf and Line reveal a bold new interpretation of nature with nuance and maturation. Scott’s work celebrates the act of painting. The shear feat of assembling colors and shapes, capturing light and gesture attracts the intellect and engages the viewer’s emotions. This is expressed in the various appraisals written by the catalogue’s contributors. Eight artists, curators, and writers ruminate on Scott’s professional merits and exuberance and his ability to transport his audience to another realm where visual delights proliferate. Heartfelt appreciation goes to the HTG staff; to our fabulous designer, Russell Hassell; and to the uber-professional Robert Nangle and all at Meridian Printing. And, of course, thanks once again to Bill Scott who never ceases to strive for new complexities and innovations in his art and whose paintings fill so many with joy. Hollis Taggart Debra Pesci
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Leaf and Line: On the Paintings of Bill Scott A handful of plants located on several small tables in the corner of a painter’s studio. In other hands, this subject might result in images hardly worth pondering. But the exuberant sequence of paintings mined from that ho-hum tableau by Bill Scott opens a dialogue between depiction and perception, what we see and how we analyze and explain it. His well-ordered chaos of cool, green fingers outlined in red; blues that shade away into turquoise; traceries of imaginary sunsets; and magentas, yellows, and oranges fill the viewer with a sense of energy on the move. Rather than objects, we’re given the possibility of color and shape caught in the act of becoming. Nothing holds still in these still lifes. These pictures set themselves up in opposition to what is static. As images, they’re both present and arriving, transformed by the act of capturing light as it passes through objects, infusing them with different colors and shapes. These images are not pictorial snapshots, but attempts to get inside the spirit of the changes underway, changes continuous and essential. Color is feeling, but beyond feeling, what are we seeing? Shapes that resolve, when they do, in the leaf—the only object concretely represented, a piece of tantalizing trickery—and the line. Our eyes may fasten first on color before noticing the singularity of this line. The line in these paintings, thick and dark, has all the strength of a signature. It captures and contains, but reluctantly and sometimes not at all, as in the circles of color left unbounded. You soon know it at a glance—jagged or childlike or seemingly random—and follow as it records both response and change, sometimes in the form of shapes that suggest only themselves. JIM CORY is a poet and essayist living in Philadelphia.
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Stillness 2017, oil on canvas, 48 x 45 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17� 5
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Running between Weeds 2017, oil on canvas, 16 x 16 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17” 6
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Winter Flowers 2016, oil on canvas, 43 x 39 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 16� 7
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Perennials I 2017, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17� 8
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A Garden in the Studio 2017, oil on canvas, 42 x 32 inches, dated and signed lower right: “17 / Bill Scott� 9
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Thetic Moments: Where We Are and Where We’ve Been Dense and nuanced statements about visual works, especially those of younger artists, often seem overwrought, as if too much is being read into the works rather than from them. The works themselves seem to have difficulty holding up the ideas that are being pushed onto them. While works by established artists may lack some immediacy in relation to current media, they gain the ability to support other nuances and resonances. As we spend more time with them, the recent paintings by Bill Scott (like many of the late works by artists in the 2016 Unfinished exhibit at the Met Breuer) hold up their end of the conversation, engaging complex emotions and meanings. Simply put, they are like a perceptive friend, explaining meaningful events and places in direct and simple terms. Our sense of ourselves and the ways in which we understand and effect change in the spaces we inhabit shift over time, but they are based in our sense of the dynamics of our location. Visual works create a location for these senses of ourselves. The intense colors, shapes, and freely moving dark lines in Scott’s paintings are equally about us and about where we live. As the artist told me in his studio in December 2017, his works are equally landscapes and interiors: places we go to in the world and places we live in. His paintings reflect how we compose the world and how the world composes us. In Scott’s recent work, color composes pattern and light that we recognize as our own and the world’s. The light is not an imitation of what we see—given from our experience; it is created by the interactions of color on the surface of the works. The black lines both interrupt this light and the patterns of the world it creates, and reinforce the patterns and rhythms of the images. The narratives are somewhat jarring and perhaps violently forceful as we spend more time with them—not threatening, but lively and even chaotic. They are in motion and in transition as we look at them. Julia Kristeva says that our sense of ourselves as we mature in childhood is composed of thetic moments: defining aspects, theses of ourselves, that exist momentarily and then reformulate through transitions. The powerful sense of being in this state of transition in our own identity (which seems part of our perceptions of the landscape and territories of the world, as well as our places in the world) seeps into Scott’s sense of eclipsed seasons and our momentary perceptions of them. Scott’s images let us position ourselves in them and in relation to them. Rather than offer passive pleasure, they challenge us to realign the world to allow for their freedom and balance, to give them expressive power at other moments and places. TOM CSASZ AR is an artist, writer, and teacher based in Philadelphia. He has taught in the graduate schools of the University of the Arts and is currently an associate professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He has written over three decades for various publications including The New Art Examiner, Sculpture, title-magazine.com, and Artcritical.com
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Spring in Autumn 2017, oil on canvas, 50 x 65 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17� 11
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Perennials II 2017, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17� 12
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Interior Garden 2017, oil on canvas, 55 x 60 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17� 13
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Picnic 2017, oil on canvas, 11 x 14 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17” 14
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Perennials III 2017, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17” 15
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The Paintings of Bill Scott The garden of earthly delights. Few painters have the courage of spirit, let alone the capacity, to revel in such beauty—a beauty uninhibited by the disasters and distractions of our contemporary world. Today the formal imperatives that launched the era of pure abstraction have given way to a plethora of postmodern stylistic flourishes. Nevertheless, abstraction continues to form the very basis of what we do as painters and, as the work of Bill Scott amply demonstrates, it still is capable of intoxicating visual satisfaction. And yet there is a remarkably figurative quality to the groupings of these compositions. These gardens are populated with interactions sometimes bordering on the anthropomorphic. Perhaps it is the hierarchical distribution of elements that reads as a clearly dramatic effect. Or is it the sometimes conversational relationships between patterns of color and shape? (The beauty and strength of abstraction lies in its multivalent capacity for signification.) Is it wrong to see in them iconic compositions that conjure heroic or even biblical meaning? Is it possible to glean family happiness, intimacy, or even dysfunction? The elements in Scott’s work interact in a slyly discursive way. Steeped in an exuberant field of color sensation, a hidden iconography emerges. The subtle conflict between pure abstraction and dramatic content gives these paintings a life and complexity that steer them well beyond the merely decorative. It is this engine that drives the evolving story of his process, aligning him with the finest abstract painters. In the end, perhaps the finest way to experience Scott’s paintings is to view them as operatic—a pure conflation of drama and sound, protagonists and antagonists set within a chorus of voices with a richness of harmony akin to those found in that stunning artifice of musical form. VINCENT DESIDERIO is a painter represented by Marlborough Gallery, New York.
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An Eclipsed Spring 2017, oil on canvas, 34 x 30 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17” 17
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Shade Garden II 2017, oil on canvas, 12 x 18 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17� 18
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A Storybook October 2017, oil on canvas, 48 x 45 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17” 19
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Morning 2017, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17� 20
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One Small Green 2017, oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17” 21
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Beauty and Doubt Abstraction, to a great degree, is a protracted effort to cultivate surprise. The marks that novice abstract painters put down mostly do not: insipid zigzags, meandering doodles, edge-to-edge lines that blandly divide the rectangle. To appreciate Bill Scott’s mastery, one must understand that he has to contend with the opposite problem. The bad lines never entirely go away. One just becomes inured to the process of altering them or incorporating them or obliterating them. But by the time a painter has adjusted several thousand marks, modulated the ten-thousandth area of color against its neighbor, and done decades’ worth of serious, genuine work in the studio, ease can arise. This is a relief, for a while. But with ease comes a loss of the tension that abstraction needs in order to function as art, and not merely a decorated surface. This is a particular danger for artists working in a lyrical mode, such as Scott. Losing tension leads to painting that looks saccharine. Or worse, inert. Some painters embrace ease and enjoy it for the rest of their working lives, to the detriment of their art. A painter of Scott’s caliber seeks out the technique that is causing the ease, eliminates it, and rebuilds around the vacuum. Inevitably that starts producing facile results. The artist repeats the process indefinitely. Sometimes discarded maneuvers are launched again in a spirit of rebellion against asceticism. Remaining in the mind of surprise requires doubt, and doubt about doubt. There are overarching themes to Scott’s work. His palette tends toward high saturation. He uses hot colors with great aplomb. To combat the tendency of such colors to break apart a composition, he draws lines of dark paint with a one-inch brush. To keep the lines surprising, he refers to the curves of a philodendron growing in the studio. (This last item may seem counterintuitive: drawing an extant object results in surprising lines? Yes. Nature is more inventive than the brains we use to think about it. Our recollections are too orderly, too repetitive, too general.) But given a roomful of his paintings, one can see where Scott has thrown away each of these methods. The arcs of the philodendron give way to invented ones. Some shapes get demarcations while others collide. Neutrals creep in over the bright colors like storm clouds. Abstraction itself may disappear, as the still lifes and interior scenes that gave rise to this work reassert themselves. Questions surround the whole project. They are queries that resist thought and defy words, so one must paint the answers, or try. As luscious as they are, Scott’s paintings are suffused with anxiety. This lends their obvious joy an urgency that bliss alone cannot accomplish. And yet they offer bliss, because Scott has refused ease and brought it into being. FR ANKLIN EINSPRUCH is an artist and writer in Boston.
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Leaf and Line 2017, oil on canvas, 63 x 42 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17” 23
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A Thank You Note 2017, oil on canvas, 16 x 16 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17” 24
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The Middle Part of May 2017, oil on canvas, 35 x 50 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17” 25
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Conversations Bill Scott’s paintings are like good conversations, ones that travel back and forth between the everyday and the philosophical. The feeling taken away is even more important than the specific words spoken. Seven years ago, I had one such conversation with him. It started out simply enough when I asked him how to paint an abstract painting. In his typical generosity, he took my somewhat naive question seriously. He shared his experiences but did not try to answer my question. Instead, he helped me begin the process of answering it for myself. The respect he showed me is the same he offers to those who see his paintings and share in the experience of discovering their substance. As with a good conversation, Scott lets his paintings unfold, unhurried, over time. He patiently creates layers of meaning and finds depth that is unpredictable. In this way he discovers his paintings as he paints them. They capture a quality of authentic discovery in a world of conventions and, through their visual vitality, they beckon us to engage with them and make our own discoveries. Scott is selective in what he does and does not include in his paintings. He provides a feast of the visual: beautiful colors, unexpected marks, rhyming shapes, bold choices. The color, light, and shapes he paints are nearly familiar and nearly nameable, but he leaves them open so that any one mark has many possible meanings. He weaves together these deeply felt marks to create complex visual relationships that challenge our perception and feed our imagination. He asks much of the viewer to navigate, name, and locate within his paintings, but therein lies the excitement and the gift. There are genuinely no shortcuts to seeing Scott’s paintings. He is generous, but not so generous as to deprive us of what we are capable of discovering and noticing for ourselves. We benefit from the layers of decisions guided by the painter’s willingness to follow his own intuition and a lifetime’s experience painting. All at once, we see the distillation of the lengthy interaction and exchange between the artist and his canvas and we are invited to begin our own conversation with his work, requiring only our time and our attention. E VAN FUGA Z ZI is an artist living in Philadelphia where he is represented by Gross McCleaf Gallery.
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An Enclosed Space 2017, oil on canvas, 45 x 48 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17” 27
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Suspension 2017, oil on canvas, 11 x 14 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17” 28
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Lullaby 2017, oil on canvas, 32 x 42 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17” 29
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Bill Scott: Reinventing His Rose On my most recent visit to Bill Scott’s studio, a reproduction of Matisse’s 1942 painting, The Idol, came into view as he moved a large canvas propped against the wall onto the easel for better viewing. His paintings often strike me twice. First comes a flood of pure sensation, as Bonnard once described, “the appearance of things in the exact moment of entering a room.” Colors and air whip up a positively frenzied delight. And then as I settle back into my chair, shaking my head to clear my eyes of the unrelenting beauty of the thing, I can start to really see. Under the bounty lies something much more precarious and daring, hidden in plain sight. The beauty Scott presents rests on an infrastructure that is of our world and of the rules of painting. There is space that expertly opens and closes, foreground spilling forward only to be held up by a dainty violet line, tiny slices of open windows offering a glimpse of cascading garden shapes beyond. As I sat there reveling in that distinct post-looking-at-good-painting glow that any painter can attest to, I thought harder about why these paintings work while others fail. I have seen previous students and contemporaries try to emulate his expression to no avail. Scott’s work is seductive and relatable and makes painters want to paint, so that is understandable. But it is inimitable; other attempts feel shallow and sugary, somehow simultaneously lacking the search and sophistication. Perhaps it was seeing the Matisse print in such close proximity that night, but I felt as if Matisse had reached into my internal conversation. In a 1953 essay he talks about how a painter must look at the world as if seeing for the first time, not jaded or bleary eyed, but full of wonder, if he ever wants to express a true and original vision. He goes on to say, “I think that nothing is more difficult for a true painter than to paint a rose, since before he can do so, he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.” Scott seems to be constantly studying other painters’ roses, real roses blooming on Philadelphia fences, his own previous versions of those roses, thinking about them and then reinventing them. He does this not in a haphazard, casual way or in a dramatic, upending way, but by looking out at the world and absorbing its matter and then deliberately attempting to express its grace. That first striking sensation I feel when I look at his work is this, his pure feeling, that humble, stark acknowledgment of being human and staring directly at the glory of nature, which necessitates a firstperson response to be emotive. But for that sensation and invention to maintain power it must be held up by a serious and disciplined understanding of formal consideration. This is the thing that is so masterful, understood by Scott and Matisse alike. The degree of invention is sustained only by the difficult and unyielding parameters of form. Compositional decisions of shape and color are completely devoid of excess, each touch to the surface purposeful and felt. This synthesis of rigorous structure and abundant generosity allow for a world where a circle knocking at the window or a squiggle pausing to catch its breath may be a little whimsical but by no means unbelievable. The familiar is otherworldly, in a kind and forgiving way, positing a place we haven’t really been but hope to visit one day. AUBRE Y LE VINTHAL is a painter represented by Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York.
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Homage 2017, oil on canvas, 55 x 60 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17� 31
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A Little Breeze 2017, oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17� 32
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A Pathway to a Stream 2017, oil on canvas, 39 x 43 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17” 33
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Season’s Greetings Recently I had the great good fortune to run into my friend Bill Scott at a Christmas party in Philadelphia, a short distance from his studio. The chance encounter provided the perfect opportunity for me to see his latest paintings, each one more visually fanciful and accomplished than the next. After decades of study and apprenticeship with mentors, both living and dead, Scott has become what the Europeans used to call a “master painter.” His work seemed, if possible, still more thoughtful and sophisticated than any I had enjoyed over many years since we organized an exhibition of the Impressionist Berthe Morisot for the National Gallery in 1987. Since my visit to his studio, I have been asking myself what sets these newest paintings apart. The luscious colors, the overtones of fruits and flowers are familiar by now, as are the fluid silhouettes of tendrils and philodendron leaves, and all the passing shadows. Scott’s studied quickness is familiar too, his alert sense of pace as well as scale. I found an unpublished text about Scott’s work that I wrote in 2009: “Typically structured like patchwork quilts with arrays of intuitively matched rectangular patches, Scott’s paintings quiver with the sort of gentle life forces at play in a garden. In his paintings, colors and shadows are arranged so as to seemingly shift every which way by the exuberant power of some rhythmic and endlessly reconfiguring current. Every one of the many similar shapes arrests attention differently, with its own quirky place and substance. The interplay among these shapes, sometimes punctuated or decorated with bright spots, is often overwritten by light-handed calligraphic strokes, incipient outlines, or silhouettes that always leave off only to start up nearby without ever taking shape or coming to rest.” I compared the sense of space and light with Marcel Proust’s verbal description of his grandmother’s hotel room with windows on three sides: “when the sun’s rays, coming from different aspects and, as it were, from different hours of the day, broke the angles of the wall, . . . [suggesting] a hive in which the sweet juices of the day . . . were distilled, scattered, intoxicating, visible, a garden of hope which dissolved in a quivering haze of silver threads and rose leaves.” But no matter how supple and free the suggestion of space seems in Scott’s previous work, with colors and shapes rustling every which way rather than staying still on any grid, in his new paintings the space feels stirred up as never before. The art historian in me would go so far as to associate some of them with Wassily Kandinsky’s visionary Improvisations, which heralded abstraction as the highest genre of picture making, just before the outbreak of World War I. With none of the intimations of anxiety and apocalypse in Kandinsky’s work, Scott’s paintings now have a similar cosmic energy, but with a sense of world as self—they are more than ever mental places, where his improvising self has briskly marked out a stream of visual consciousness. There have never before been so many circles in his work: they haunt these compositions, pulsing throughout like bubbles in uncorked champagne or the seeds of a dandelion head that someone has blown to the wind. Now rather than the Parisian Proust, I sense the Philadelphian Walt Whitman: “Thou pulse! thou motive of the stars, suns, systems, that, circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, athwart the shapeless vastness of space! How should I think—how breathe a single breath—how speak, if, out of myself, I could not launch, to those, superior universes?” CHARLES STUCKE Y is an independent scholar based in New York. Currently he is head of research for the forthcoming revised catalogue raisonné of paintings and gouaches by Yves Tanguy. 34
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A Flower-filled Sky 2017, oil on canvas, 55 x 60 inches, signed and dated lower left: “Bill Scott 17” 35
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Winter Leaves 2017, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17� 36
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An Ode to Flowers 2017, oil on canvas, 41 x 51 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17” 37
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The Paintings of 2017 by Bill Scott Bill Scott is a painter with deep roots in the history of modernism. In his work of 2017, he embraces the unfinished statement and the incomplete gesture, artistic strategies that were important to the French avant-garde in the late nineteenth century and have been part of the vocabulary of art making ever since. The sensitivity of Scott’s practice is such that he recognizes forms that are on their way to becoming something else, and he has the discipline to stop them before they get there, thereby creating the drama of anticipation and mystery. Individual strokes of the brush fall away before completing their trajectories and forms that should logically respond to other shapes and colors within a composition might only partially assume the anticipated characteristics. In An Ode to Flowers, for example, an irregular circular form appears in the upper right quadrant, a pale-blue window within the larger curving window of the overall composition that jumps forward and focuses attention on an odd assemblage of inchoate markings and organic shapes that somehow elevate this elegy to the subject of flowers. Similarly important for Scott is honesty about the process of his collage-like approach to layering form, line, and color. Differentiated textures simulate collage elements, offering contrast with more painterly linear forms that underlay and overlap them. It is sometimes possible to find sweeping marks that suggest an initial compositional approach, as well as intermediary and final inventions, and finishing touches. As in so much American and European painting since the advent of Abstract Expressionism, the artist’s process becomes a journey that unfolds for the curious viewer. This journey may only be perceived, which is to say that any viewer’s idea of beginning and end may be solely their own, not at all corresponding to the actual sequence of the development of the painting. Nonetheless, Scott confirms that in Lullaby, eight or nine chromosome-like strokes of dark blue on the lower edge, just left of center, were the last elements to be added to that tableau. These staccato markings put the brakes on the swirling composition—a wedge of striations that supports the overall composition and suggests a brief pause. Scott’s paintings require a long view, and they offer in return a broad range of emotions. To appropriate a term the artist uses to describe work by others he himself admires, the paintings of 2017 are especially “felt.” Saturday, with its buoyant balloon-like forms, leaps with joy. A Storybook October gives a view into a fraught, fiery landscape of red and orange. Homage, with its uniquely uncertain array of fruit, flowers, and tableware, is a decidedly classical, though new kind of indeterminate still life. If we embrace the idea that Cézanne’s apples suggest an ambiguity about the sensual dimensions of life, then we might ask: what emotions are expressed in the forms of Scott’s painting? Where do his works lead us? Many questions are raised, with an equal number of roads and few definite answers provided. However, the ongoing emotive truth and sincerity of this work is that it expresses the different tonics of life as full, fertile, vibrant, complex, and energetic. This, I would suggest, is the resonant plane where Scott has been working for the past year. WILLIAM R. VALERIO, PhD, is the Patricia Van Burgh Allison Director and CEO of Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia.
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Saturday 2017, oil on canvas, 35 x 50 inches, signed and dated lower right: “Bill Scott 17� 39
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BILL SCOTT
2014
American, born 1956
2013
2018 2017
2016 2014 2013 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2004 2002 1999 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1990 1989
2017
2016 2015
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ Kentucky College of Art and Design, Louisville Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York Cerulean Arts, Philadelphia C. R. Ettinger Studio, Philadelphia Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York Albemarle Gallery, London Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA The Print Center, Philadelphia Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York Albemarle Gallery, London Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York Mangel Gallery, Philadelphia Mangel Gallery, Philadelphia Mulligan-Shanoski Gallery, San Francisco Mulligan-Shanoski Gallery, San Francisco Prince Street Gallery, New York Mangel Gallery, Philadelphia Mulligan-Shanoski Gallery, San Francisco Prince Street Gallery, New York Mangel Gallery, Philadelphia Prince Street Gallery, New York Mangel Gallery, Philadelphia Mangel Gallery, Philadelphia Prince Street Gallery, New York SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum, Myrtle Beach, SC, Grand Strand Collects. Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Arthur B. Carles and His Expanding Circle. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Two Centuries of American Still-Life Painting: The Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs Collection (traveled to Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, TN and Tacoma Art Museum, WA). Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, The Loaded Brush: The Oil Sketch and the Philadelphia School of Painting (Patrick Connors, guest curator). Paul Prouté S.A., Paris, Dessins et Estampes du XVI au XX Siècle. Paul Prouté S.A., Paris, Dessins et Estampes du XVI au XX Siècle. Cerulean Arts, Philadelphia, Fictitious Pleasures: Bill Scott and Alex Kanevsky. C. R. Ettinger Studio Gallery Space, Philadelphia, Paper to Paper: Chine Collé.
2011
2009
2008
2007 2004
C. R. Ettinger Studio Gallery Space, Philadelphia, Variations of Line Etching, A Traditional Medium as Used by Contemporary Artists. Michener Museum, Doylestown, Creative Hand, Discerning Heart: Form, Rhythm, Song. The National Arts Club, New York, Flight from Nature: The Abstract as Ideal. Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Just In: Recent Acquisitions. Schmidt-Dean Gallery, Philadelphia, Color Wars. Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC, Color Study. Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, Flirting with Abstraction. Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, Summer Selections. Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, Resonance of Place: David Brewster, Julian Hatton, Ying Li, Stanley Lewis, Ruth Miller, Anne Neely, & Bill Scott. Somerville-Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE, Five Artists. Paul Prouté S.A., Paris, Dessins et Estampes du XVI au XX Siècle. The Painting Center, New York, Color Key. National Academy Museum, New York, 183rd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art (Benjamin Altman Award). Paul Prouté S.A., Paris, Dessins et Estampes du XVI au XX Siècle. The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, C. R. Ettinger Studio Recent Editions. National Academy of Design, New York, 179th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art (Adolph and Clara Obrig Prize).
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Berkson, Bill. “About Bill Scott.” In Bill Scott. New York: Prince Street Gallery, 1997. Berman, Avis. “A Conversation with Bill Scott.” In Bill Scott: Looking Through. New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2007. Boyle, Richard. Bill Scott: Process and Continuity. New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2004. Einspruch, Franklin. “New York: Bill Scott at Hollis Taggart.” Art in America, January 2012. http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/ reviews/bill-scott/. Finkelstein, Louis. The Paintings of Bill Scott. Philadelphia: Mangel Gallery, 1999. Gerdts, William. Two Centuries of American Still-Life Painting: The Frank and Michelle Hevrdejs Collection, 134–36, 280–81. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2016. Lucie-Smith, Edward. Bill Scott. London: Albemarle Gallery, 2006. Mir, Stan. “Bill Scott’s Bittersweet Fictions.” Hyperallergic, December 17, 2016. https://hyperallergic.com/345558/ bill-scotts-bittersweet-fictions/.
Naar, Harry. Bill Scott: The Landscape in a Still Life—Paintings, Pastels, Prints, and Watercolors: 1977–2017. Lawrenceville, NJ: Rider University, 2017. Naves, Mario. Bill Scott: Recent Works. London: Albemarle Gallery, 2010. Naves, Mario. “Currently Hanging: Irresistible Oils.” New York Observer, May 31, 2004. http://observer.com/2004/05/ currently-hanging-51/. Newhall, Edith. “Galleries: Color Exploring Depth.” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 9, 2016. http://www.philly.com/philly/ entertainment/20161211_Art_galleries__ Velasquez_at_Pentimenti__Scott_at_ Cerulean__Cassway_at_Emerging_ Artists.html Samet, Jennifer. “Beer with a Painter: Bill Scott.” Hyperallergic, April 9, 2016. https:/ hyperallergic.com/289572/ beer-with-a-painter-bill-scott/. Stavitsky, Gail. Matisse and American Art, 88. Montclair, NJ: Montclair Art Museum, 2017. Stuckey, Charles. Bill Scott: Recent Work. New York: Prince Street Gallery, 1993. Zarobell, John. “Form Reveals Art’s Secret: The Recent Work of Bill Scott,” in Bill Scott. New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2011. SELECTED COLLECTIONS Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC British Museum, London Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH Cleveland Museum of Art Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, NY Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (promised gift) Philadelphia Museum of Art Rider University Art Gallery, Lawrenceville, NJ The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA
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