Born in Saint John, his formative years spent in Fredericton, Stephen Scott began art studies at the Ontario College of Art for one year before returning to New Brunswick to complete his training at Mount Allison University. He graduated with a fine arts degree in 1978. Subsequently, he obtained a Master of Arts in Arts Therapy from Concordia University, Montréal, Québec in 1998.

His early paintings in egg tempera asserted his exceptional proficiency as a painter and a sensibility that cast the New Brunswick landscape under a dark, brooding mantle. This haunting tension between natural and inhabited environment has continued in his work, albeit he now prefers the oil medium in painting. With equal skill and ease he has reflected a more luminous side to his vision in the transparent medium of watercolors. Likewise, figure drawings, (quick studies often scaled to life-size), demonstrated more than assurance between eye and hand, but also an ability to expose personality in the sitters' likeness. Such solid traditional artistic grounding and technical virtuosity is not practiced for its own sake, however. It simply provides Scott with a way and means of probing below the surfaces of his subjects opening perceptions that respond to emotional vulnerabilities and a dialogue of ideas on a symbolic, spiritual level. This interior resonance characterizes his major themes, including landscapes, still life, and figures.

The figure within the landscape, for example, must be considered not simply as a visage, but in its harmonious relationship with the surroundings articulated in gesture, form, and colors. The subdued dark range of his preferred palette sustains a sense of mystery, even melancholy. It also suggests the subtle influences Stephen Scott has absorbed from the great masters, whose work he has studied during several scholarship sponsored study and work trips to Europe, notably Antwerp (Belgium), Gotland (Sweden) and Berlin (Germany). He is currently maintaining connections in Berlin, where he lived in 2004 and 2005. Scott paints full time and resides in a rural setting near Fredericton.

GERMAN SHEPHERD
oil on paper
14 x 19 in.
framed
framed dimension: 22 x 28.5 in.
$2,100

BEACH SCENE AT BODEMUSEUM
oil on panel
9 x 12 in.
framed
framed dimension: 16 x 19 in.
$1,025

MULLACKSTRASSE
graphite
18 x 24 in.
framed
framed dimension: 26 x 32 in.
$850

TUNNEL
graphite
18 x 24 in.
framed
framed dimension: 25 x 31 in.
$850

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Berlin's mythology is a stage setting for imagining. For me and I think for anyone, the fascination of travel is of course the possibility for experiencing the tangible presence of history. How so Berlin? As in all German cities, the destruction of the War and the influence of the modern inhibit the ease of entry into this romantic quest. Still, the fascination exists. Perhaps my own particular experience of Berlin 's prevailing mystique has provided me a less fragmented conduit to extensive musings of the passages of time and social and cultural change; perhaps there is a mystical dimension to be accounted for in the fact that my most important astrological transits fall across this area. How can one quantify either? In any case, my original quest was to explore the modern-day mythology of Germany 's influence on the world of art. What I have found would be the subject for a book. To state it simply, the complex intermingling of social and economic history, the relationship between artistic presence and socioeconomic conditions is integral to whatever spot on the globe you examine. The uniqueness of Berlin 's art is due partly to its post-war experience, its decades of isolation, its historic legacy, and its relationship of art and broader aspects of culture. What is uniquely German as a whole is the country's post-war reaction to classical associations, the counter-influence of Beuys on emerging American models, and the adoption of German (Brücke) expressionism as it's genetic style. It hasn't been until recently that I have begun to truly assimilate the understanding that art cannot exist outside of its social functions, and to view North American art as less fully integrated. As with all my life experiences, the outcome of this one changes my perspective and how I evaluate of what I and others of my profession do.

It's at times when I feel my perceptions are the clearest that I appreciate my good fortune. The artist's life is full of uncertainties and sacrifice but at the same time provides opportunities for experience denied most. There is a charismatic quality to the ongoing progress of life which leads me to believe that much of what happens is due to more than chance.

When people hear of my friend Erich's untimely death often the response is to question how I will go to Germany now. What I will miss is the opportunity of the sharing with a truly rare individual of ideas, feelings and experiences across cultures and ages. One of the dynamics of Erich's generosity I think lay in the fact that he was aware of my own ethics and abilities, and his gifts were spontaneous and not monetary, but were gifts of opportunity for experience. He loved travel, history and uniqueness, and he liked to share this with others. At the point I met him, I think Erich was openly enjoying life to the full; living for experience and experiencing living. His charisma was evident in the expression of an active, but solid and untroubled core. He was a hard working businessman who was successful in part because of his ability to read, I think, the core of a person's nature, and to establish working relationships with similar-minded, honest and motivated people. As his enthusiasm for art was a developing aspect of his life, I feel fortunate to be among those whose experience he invited to share with him. I feel fortunate in not only being given an opportunity to experience what I have briefly outlined above, but also in being a person whom Erich believed appreciated and could benefit from this gift.

The works in this group are really the beginnings of something, and I offer them with some humility. I recognize the difficulty in making about-changes, and I am uncertain that change for the sake of change is a solid heuristic. But there is a shift in expressive goals. In this instance, the romantic (idealistic) naturalist has been given a philosophical challenge. In trading my phenomenology of expressive discovery through recording the quotidian and familiar I am faced with the task of having to work through real (but remembered) sensation and impressions and find a balance in representation of these impressions of the Berlin myth with my own set of aesthetic values and operative goals. This is not a travel journal, and it is another step away from real(ism). It is an effort to expose core elements in a place I truly identify with. The images cycle from a more obvious examination of things and places to constructions based partly on imagination. There is a feeling in my mind of figures moving like characters on a stage. In which case all is projection and identification, like in a play and all imagining. I think the shift in subject matter will continue for awhile, and I think my further work will continue down a road toward more reductive and focused idealism.

I will be returning to Berlin to reconnect with this mission through this brief doorway.

September 2006

OYSTER SHELLS
oil on panel
6 x 7.75 in.
framed
framed dimension: 12.5 x 14.5 in.
$550