SAM SCOTT HONORARY ARTIST 2010

about the Artist
A child of Chicago, Scott has vowed to experience as many of the earth’s eco-systems as he possibly could. He has lived among the Oglala Sioux in South Dakota, worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, served as artist on a classified mission to the Amazonian jungle working for the Department of Energy and the State Department, all for brief periods. As an undergraduate, he had his first one-person show in Rome, Italy, and made his commitment to painting in Florence. In 1965, after receiving his BFA from the University of Michigan, he took his first teaching job at Morgan State College in Baltimore. In Baltimore, he was part of an artist colony near the wharves. He received a full scholarship to the Maryland Institute of Art, receiving his MFA there in 1969.

Scott moved to Santa Fe in 1969 and five years later was awarded the first one-person show ever given to a living artist by the New Mexico Fine Arts Museum. On the strength of that exhibition he was invited into the 1975 Whitney Biennial of Contemporary Art. In 1977 he was elected by Santa Fe artists to direct and hang the first Santa Fe Amory Show. From 1978 to 1983, Scott held a teaching position at the University of Arizona. He returned to Santa Fe in 1983 and has been based here and in Pilar, New Mexico, since that time. In 1994 Scott received the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts from the City of Santa Fe; and in 1997 he was given a 30-year solo retrospective at the New Mexico Fine Arts Museum: Sam Scott: An American Voice, Paintings 1967-1997. He is one of five artists chosen to represent New Mexico’s Capital Art Collection as a “State Treasure” in a display in the Capitol Building in Santa Fe.

More than simply masterful paintings, his canvases embody a vision of “brave beauty” that has motivated him since his youth. In each painting, and across the entire body of his work, there can be found an extraordinary range of colors, masterful and unexpected paint applications and evocations of the natural world in microcosm. Arising from nearly seven decades of life experiences, the paintings of Sam Scott invite a dialogue that offers fresh revelations, time over tiem, to those who are attentive to them.

Coming of age in the wake of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Scott absorbed the influences of teachers and mentors, including Grace Hartigan, Philip Guston, Clyfford Still and Helen Frankenthaler, while responding to his own vision. As the mainstream in abstraction moved towards pure distillation and then minimalism in the late 1960s, Scott continued to enliven his paintings with the energies of nature, his primary teacher. Aiming for what he calls “fugitive figuration” – bringing elements of narrative into abstract painting – Scott evokes allusions to images that are universal and timeless in their significance.

Sam Scott worked with students at Capital High School and Santa Fe High School.

ARTsmart honored Sam Scott during the sumptuous Gourmet Dinner & Auction on Saturday, 27 February 2010.  One of Scott's paintings and the student artworks were auctioned. The proceeds benefit ARTsmart projects and programs.