{"product_id":"solstice-self-portrait-20897","title":"Solstice Self Portrait","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis painting is presented in a handmade dark brown wooden frame with a white wood liner. The outside framed measurements are 27.25 x 23.25 in.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn defense of the narrative of art, by Stephen Scott:\u003cbr\u003e\"One difference between literary narrative and that of the visual arts lies in literature's disambiguative function and its ability to formulate and engage patterns of emotion common to conflict and resolution, (or discord and harmony) which at the least provides the experience of resolution. Visual art relies on quick emotive response, based on visual and formal narrative constructions. The strength of visual art is its ability to maintain ambiguity or complexity, which is a directly experiential situation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVisual art is not only representative but referential, and the strength of its connection to the subject or intention lies in formal aesthetics as well as the intentionality and presence of the artists' experience. The manifestation of skill is perceived either consciously or implicitly, and is a factor which allows for the sharing of idea or experience in an open and communicable manner. It is an ingredient which attempts to link even more traditional standards of beauty to perhaps challenging or seemingly chaotic invention. My concerns for the narrative in art are that the artwork in question could be in danger of losing the strength of its position as a contemplative object when it serves merely as a point of reference to an argument which is best conducted elsewhere.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA main complexity in the expressive aspects of my work lies in the duality of interpretive and self-referential focus. This has led me to follow the post-modernist maxim of art as requiring “an integration of form and content”. My self-referential creative needs have always gravitated toward intuitive and emotive expression of subject in line, form and colour while being directed by a profound attempt to move toward an impeccability in intent.\" - Stephen Scott, 2026\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eARTIST BIOGRAPHY - \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI came to painting when I was 20 in the same manner as I have followed its path since; not through calculation or decisive choice, but through following an intuitive imperative; a need for a direction grounded in deeper emotional sources. One could say it chose me, but then I was born for it. Romantic feeling and imagination had always led me to seek out private and unique places, and the cream of this kind of feeling drove my painting, especially landscape for many years.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"entry-content cf\" itemprop=\"articleBody\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was during my first travels, in Morocco that the recognition of a path came to me, and it came immediately and in a completely rational moment of insight. I give credit to the profound experience of travel, and especially the completely sensual and immersed exotic experience of north africa. This was 1972, a time when europe, north africa and the middle east were relatively calm, traditional ways were still perceptible, and travel was cheap and safe. At the moment of recognition I felt that a life in which I could express as much of the mystery and magic around me would be acceptable and worthwhile.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe much larger trajectory of my career since that time cannot be paraphrased. There is the period of study at Ontario College of Art and my degree in Fine Arts at Mount Allison. There was the period in the late 90’s when I achieved my Masters in Art Therapy at Concordia University in Montreal. My book \u003ci\u003eSurface Reflections\u003c\/i\u003e by Bob Barriault does justice to describing the central directions and philosophies which have driven me throughout.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI have held to a fairly rigorous traditionalism in my painting, as it seemed a more direct responsiveness through observation would lead to less mannered or arbitrary stylization. In my later works I feel the degree of expressiveness suits the uncovering of less conscious and more directly emotional and preconscious undercurrents which underly the formation of myth, metaphor and symbol in representational painting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePainter Stephen Scott’s emphasis is a focus on subject and lyrical subjective representation. The transcendent experience which Scott seeks through painting is an attempt to fuse perceived universal truths through the juxtapositon of iconic symbolisms and surface as metaphor (lyrical constructions) in an effort to gain articulation in his painterly expression.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cfooter\u003e\u003ccite\u003eRobert Barriault\u003c\/cite\u003e\u003c\/footer\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStephen Scott has both a fine eye and hand. He often paints directly from nature and that gives value to the immediacy of his art. Stephen is also an unabashed romantic and that, in this time and age, is a very good thing when so many of us are trying to be pragmatic about everything in our lives. Today there seems to be little mainstream interest in landscape art perhaps because it does not fit readily into the Postmodern mode except perhaps as a vehicle for irony. But Stephen as a romantic — he paints landscape as a window to an understanding of nature, as a thing of beauty. There is only his sense of that what was before his eyes waiting to be discovered by him and now shared with us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cfooter\u003e\u003ccite\u003eVirgil Hammock\u003c\/cite\u003e\u003c\/footer\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eScott has an unmatched ability to paint many worlds coexisting in each and every image. On a beach at Agadir he met his muse. From that point on, he put his hand to showing the worlds that can be reclaimed in the experience of a single painting. He creates not only as a record of place, but as points of departure for losing ourselves in the experience of art and travelling back into the uncharted places we thought we knew.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cfooter\u003e\u003ccite\u003eTom Smart\u003c\/cite\u003e\u003c\/footer\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStephen Scott draws beautifully. With consummate command of eye, hand, head and heart, he extracts a fluent non-verbal language from the landscapes he explores. For Scott, drawing is not simply a method for creating a semblance of the visible world, but a focused undivided process for giving graphic pictorial form to what his inner self sees and feels and thinks. I believe this is what Cézanne meant when he said “The landscape reflects itself, humanizes itself, thinks itself in me.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cfooter\u003e\u003ccite\u003eTerry Graff\u003c\/cite\u003e\u003c\/footer\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e","brand":"Stephen Scott","offers":[{"title":"20 x 16 in.","offer_id":44442951843927,"sku":"20897","price":2800.0,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0078\/5937\/2083\/files\/20898.jpg?v=1791818247","url":"https:\/\/gallery78.com\/products\/solstice-self-portrait-20897","provider":"Gallery 78","version":"1.0","type":"link"}