Ian C Scott - Scrapbook



	Scrapbook This section includes but a small selection of cuttings from newspaper articles gathered over the years concerning Ian's work, exhibitions and awards. Unfortunately the quality of the original copies are pretty poor, so I've put together a series of extracts from the articles. Ian wins Salvesen Award. To Japan in an elevator. Cover artist thought Wet Wet Wet was classical band. Prison Job provides new challenge for Wick artist. "Bathing in ripple of small delights". The Courier questionnaire - a full interview with Ian.

Wick Artist's Scholarship Award

One of Scotland's most coveted art prizes, the Ł8,000 Alistair Salvesen Art Scholarship has been won by Ian Scott from Wick. Ian plans to tour the U.S. with his Scholarship. - The Scotsman April 1992.

When he returns from the tour of the major U.S. cities Ian will hold a three week exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy. Mr Salvesen said: "It was an extremely difficult task assessing the work of so many talented artists, but Ian submitted work of such high standard and we are delighted that this will assist his development and help fulfil his obvious promise.



	Success on Cards A Scots artist's work is appearing on phonecards in Japan thanks to a chance encounter in a lift in the U.S. Ian Scott met Japanese businessman Satoshi So in a lift in a Chicago hotel while on a four month travelling scholarship. "As he got into the lift he bowed, and I bowed back. He bowed again and so did I. The bowing must have gone on for about three or four floors before we burst out laughing," Ian said. Mr So was so impressed by Ian's work that he persuaded Teleca to emboss phonecards with Noss Head, a watercolour of a promontory north of Wick.- Glasgow Herald October 1993 Back to Top



	Cover artist thought Wet Wet Wet was classical band A Wick artist's work has hit the high notes since being featured on the CD cover of the Wet Wet Wet single "Julia Says". Ian Scott who has a studio in Edinburgh, found himself rubbing shoulders with lead singer Marti Pellow during a recent launch party for the bands "Picture this" album. Ian's painting depicts an imaginary bus tour of Wick. Within the bus is a genie, acting as cupid, with a pen instead of a bow, tattooing a young woman with the words Julia says. Scott said: "The beauty of it is that it just fitted in with the themes I was working on." Although Ian had heard of the band he had to admit he was not aware of how big they were in the international music scene. When first told about the commission he thought the musicians would have a classical connection. Back to Top



	Prison job provides new challenge Wick Artist Ian Scott is pictured with one of his paintings at the Robert Burns exhibition "Pride and Passion", currently running at the National Museum of Scotland. The title of the work is "Address to the Deil" and came out of a part time job Ian has been doing teaching art therapy to prisoners in Shotts, Lanarkshire. "Shotts is a long term prison with a wide range of prisoners, from the highly skilled to the illiterate, so it is not an easy remit," says Ian. "But I work to remind them that they are men and not animals, and that they can take responsibility for their lives." - John O'Groats Journal, September 1996. Back to Top

Bathing in ripple of small delights

Ian Scott pays homage to the inspirational poetry of Garcia Lorca in the title of his one man show, "Duende". Born in Whitley Bay, brought up in Wick, there is nothing Andalusian in his imagery, which speaks of the cold North Sea and its nameless terrors. His debt to Lorca owes everything to metaphysics and nothing to sunshine.

Scott's paintings are mysterious allegories - which is another way of saying that their literal meaning is, to say the least, elusive. As if he were the central character in a maritime morality play, a deep-sea diver confronts us, head-on, with the ancient imprecation "Come and gyve a counte of your lives in this Worlde".

A contented pig steers a small craft, lighted candle in one trotter, tiller in the other. He wears a Wehrmacht tin hat pierced by antlers. The star of the sea catches fishes on the wing. Everyman, his diving helmetat the ready, prepares to descend to even more profound depths. In other frames fierce gulls peck and harass. Nets trap men. George Mackay Brown and northern worthies stare each other out across dipping gunnels. The eyes of our diver - now Picasso, now Pablo Casals - follow us everywhere.

Fanciful?, Yes. An accurate interpretation? Probably not. But so what? The merit of Scott's allusive painting is that he provokes response - a shiver sometimes, a smile here and there - and he summons a real painterly craftsmanship to serve his imagination and stimulate passing fancy. Make of it what you will. Beyond the Bellany miasma, the Dalls Brown threat of a skua's beak, he is his own man and speaks his own disturbing mind.

Scott spent part of his comprehensive academic training in a film school. This is clearly the influence behind his spectacular large oil painting "Guest and Ghost from the first Stone to the Sag and Fall of the Roof". The picture survives its unhelpful title by sheer graphic force - a massive four foot wizened and whiskery head dominating the foreground, beyond which an insubstantial figure, his features trapped in a blur of moving frames, anticipates some awful doom. I believe it to be a work of startling originality. W. Gordon Smith, Scottish Observer.