Ian Scott - an overview
Ian Scott comes from Wick in the North East of Scotland. In recent years he has gained an increasingly higher profile, with a series of acclaimed exhibitions at prestigious venues around the world. Ian gained a first class honors degree in Painting and Drawing from Dundee and was top postgraduate student at the city's art college.
In 1992 Ian won Scotlands most sought after art prize, the Alistair Salvesen Award. Ian's work can be found in many Scottish museum collections. His success has lead him to some very high profile commissions including a Japanese phonecard and a record cover for Wet Wet Wet.
Ian has enjoyed many jobs over the years including lecturing in Sunderland and Dorset and grave digging in London. Ian has rehabilitated some of Scotlands most dangerous murderers with his innovative art teaching in Scotlands maximum security prison, Shotts.
Click here for a more detailed CV.
The following statement provides perhaps the best insight into Ian's work.
His complex paintings are based in the 20th century genre of the surrealist. They present, in meticulous detail, a reality in an illogical situation. Every object, person or scenario presented is based on everyday reality from Scott's travels in Europe and the U.K. In the studio these are then pieced together like a jigsaw, to reach a personal conclusion.
As in the art of "Selbst Kunst", the art of giving one's life. the viewer is first drawn in by the mass of deatil, and later confronts the implicit time shifts in the work through the figure of "everyman", a friend or local character. Diving suites are a personal metaphor, symbolic of allowing movement into another element, The mythology of the sea and the morality of its fishermen are a strong element of Scott's native Caithness. Ghost figures and states of metamorphosis emphasise the theme of man on a long voyage of self realisation.
For Scott, as for the early carvers of stone, the image itself has a symbolic power. It acts not only as a mirror on reality, but also as a symbolic release in its transformation to another level.
If you have Quicktime 3, and the version 2 plug in, you can really get around Ians head!
