RECENT WORK BY ARTIST REBECCA SCOTT


I have for a long time considered that all my paintings are technically still lives, whatever the subject, by the fact that I work from a photograph. which is copied directly onto the canvas, translated on to the canvas in paint.

The act of copying a photograph of a still life, which is its self a creation from the historical tradition of still life painting, and, then by the act of painting it, brings it back again onto to canvas, thereby completing a circle, which I find interesting.

The recent still lives are not taken from another source but are my own photographs, these allow me to step away into my own world, which I’m feeling a need to do.

By placing the still lives and more recently meat cuts in a lake district landscape,
I then am creating my own background making the paintings specific to my life, living in the lakes. Such landscapes bring with them a touch of the romantic grandeur
to the domestic still lives.




All images are © Rebecca Scott and not for reproduction without permission.

Artist Rebecca Scott was previously best known for her male nudes, painted in reaction to a culture which bombards us with images of naked females but which has not yet taught us to gaze on the male in the same way. In 1988, in a delicious irony, one of her male nudes made the front page of the Sun. It was newsworthy because senior staff at Goldsmiths’ deemed it too shocking for the eyes of a visiting Princess Anne – this from the very newspaper, of course, which serves up images of the bodies of page-3 girls on a daily basis

Scott’s technique is such that previously crystal clear images attain a little roughness. The more she paints, the more her brushstrokes render her subjects imprecise, abstract even – and all the better for it if popular opinion is anything to go by. Although we think we like our images glossy and perfect, we respond more warmly to subjects that are unique, flawed. Perhaps they remind us of ourselves.