Tom Scott
Tom Scott
TOM SCOTT
email:
Website:
Tscottartist@gmail.com
SKETCHES ON PAPER
'WHY THE FUCK"N MOUNTAINS'
Digital work
'Self Portrait' (unfinished)
Oil & Acrylic on wood
80cm by 120cm
'TEN TINS OF TUNA'
Acrylic & chalk on wood
120cm by 80cm
'CONOR V MAGGIE'
Acrylic, chalk & charcoal on wood
122cm by 122cm per panel
'WHY FIGHT?'
Acrylic on wood
122cm by 81cm
'ELENA & the RWG'
Mixed media on wood
122cm by 122cm
''THEATRE'
Acrylic and chalk on wood
50cm by 80cm
'Big Conversation'
Acrylic on wood
122cm by 81cm
'MR BLUE'
Oil & Acrylic on wood
80cm by 120cm
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SEE THE WORK
This year, whenever I have painted without constraints, it felt as though a plan needed to be ‘choreographed’ in advance, and the intuitive element was somewhat lost. This isn’t a negative declaration, on the contrary I have enjoyed assuming a new role as a painter, somewhere between the director of subject matter (the cast), and builder of composition (the stage). This is something quite different to the dancer-like artist that I am when receiving and responding to painting alongside constraints. In many ways this year, I have treated my painting time as my performance time. My charcoal sketches could be ‘rehersals’, whilst my paintings are the finished product of the ‘performances’.
As a former professional ballet dancer, I have come to learn that with painting, I associate feet and hands with motion, emotion, direction and expression. After years of daily training with the Royal Ballet School, I believe I have had these associations chiselled into my personality. But now that I am a lot fatter, slower and wear a career ending ankle injury, I am forced to relive any urges to dance in the paint, chalk and charcoal of my figurative work. As my refreshed and relaxed approach to working with the ‘word generator’ surfaced, I found that my constraints had been more performative than I once gave them credit to be, perhaps even ritualistic. I first noticed this during the writing of my extended written text, when I found that my chronological responses to random generations demanded interactions in real time that couldn’t be erased. There was a level of improvisation and momentary thinking that couldn’t be repeated without the constraints process. Upon reflection, my painting process follows the same pathway, without its ending in sight.
I started this year with a systemic process, heavily influenced by Oulipo, ‘Literature at play’, the name of a philosophical writing group that aims to free language via the addition of constraints. I follow a trajectory of painting which employs a random word generator to procure subject matter with the intent that, from the element of restriction, I am forced to react intuitively and unpredictably in paint. When prompted into this reactive expression, an improvised visual language comes to light. Although my constraints process is now well established in my practice, and I am now even demonstrating its potential in the form of experimental literature, this year I have gradually but not completely lessened my dependence upon constraints, owing to worries that I might become creatively complacent or lazy, as well as a confidence for more control. I feared that I was taking the process for granted, using it too much like a tool and not as a performative, inherent element to my work, like it should be treated as. Another strong reason for partially averting my creative constraints was because I have grown tired of restrictions in the context of pandemic-hit Britain. As I continue living under a roof with no communal area and no table to eat on, I have found myself sleeping, eating, and writing from my bed in a lonely, 90 square foot flat. This combined with lockdown meant it became essential for me to have more freedom via my work. I believe I simulated this through the ownership of painterly decision making, desperate to rebel
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