Austin Scott

Per the request of Scott Wallace pen name Austin Scott we have displayed a picture of his wife and children instead of a picture of him. In Scott's words " You can see me by looking through my family and who in their right mind wouldn't rather look at them?"

Being an artist is not just what I do it’s who I am. This isn’t my hobby but my profession. We are all blessed with gifts and talents. We have been commanded to search for them. Once they are found it is our responsibility to work diligently at perfecting them and use them to glorify God.

Many times the job of an artist isn’t to perfect an image but to project a loose idea of a concept. The work is made to be viewed at a distance and accent the surrounding décor while provoking emotion from the viewer. The looser the work the more the viewer sees it the viewer’s way, making it more personal to them. In the past this has been the way I’ve painted.

My goals were quite opposite of what had made me successful. Switching directions was risky. I stopped painting for a design market or an industry standard and I started painting for myself and others like me. I suffered loss of income and great criticism. I was out cast. Like it or not, people were now seeing me for me. Although rebellion wasn’t my intention I some how fell into that category. I wasn’t seeking originality or eccentricity. I wasn’t trying to make a statement or paint for a cause. I wasn’t trying to create the next hot look or reinvent the wheel. I was simply being me. Not revealing some dark side or an inner child, not being cool or romantic, just plain and simple, bare bones me.

That was tougher than I thought. Who am I. Advertising tells us who everyone else is supposed to be. So who are we really? We are all influenced by out side sources and in essence we are all a product of our influences. Being ourselves is to a point being everybody else.

If you can remember yourself as a kid you can probably figure out who you are. Remember what exited you and provoked you with out restraint or thought of consequence. Remember how people, places and things made you feel. Witnessed the excitement of a child experiencing something for the first time. As an adult I am not much of a baseball fan but I can remember the fear of getting up to bat in little league against the giant, 6 foot 2 pitcher Todd Hilton, the rush when the ball snapped off the wooden bat, the disappointment when the 2nd baseman caught the ball, ending the game and the high of my father telling me how he was so proud of me for being tough, standing up to bat and how his son hit off a pitcher that strikes everyone else out. I was a lousy baseball player and my dad was full of it but it didn’t change the moment. As an adult I fall asleep in front of the game on T.V. but as a kid there was nothing like walking into Fen way Park holding dad’s hand. When I was a kid my father was larger than life, there was no one prettier than my mom, going to Mc Donald’s was 5star and Christmas morning was better than winning the lottery. This is how life should be. I wanted to paint with the excitement of the first kiss. I found a spark and was able to passionately lay it on canvas.

How did we see things different then now? Let’s go to the beach. An adult does see the beautiful water and sand. An adult also sees who’s hot and who’s not, a jet ski they can’t afford to take the kids on, a sail boat they wish they made enough money to buy and a cruise ship way in the distance they can’t get time off work to go on. An adult sees they don’t look as good as they used to, the couple arguing at the tikki bar, and their kids going out too far in the water with no supervision. An adult isn’t just seeing the beach. They have some how lost that ability and have been given the superpowers to simultaneously see the beach, all

the things to be done around the house, their Monday morning desk at work and the pile of bills on the counter. Just when that train of thought is broken by a 3 year old yelling “Daddy, Daddy, look what I got for you!” our natural reaction is to say “in a minute.” Because we are finishing reading a news article about some world crisis.

A 3 year old sees the wave and nothing else. In that moment their whole world is the wave. There world is very focused. Frame by frame. Their world is a cropped picture. In 10 minutes their world will be another picture. Not the picture before or the one to come. A whole new picture. This is where I wanted to start my paintings. From the view of a child. Focused and larger than life. Perspective is key. Seen from the height of some one 2-4 feet tall. Seeing more of what’s right in front of them rather than what’s all around them. I didn’t want to leave much to the imagination. I wanted the art viewer to be right there with me. To feel like they could skip a rock on the water, smell the flower or jump in the wave. Remember what it was like. That and nothing else.

To start this process I knew I needed to work from photographs because my concentration may not hold in plain air and because I wanted to paint with such great detail that plain air wouldn’t allow it. To help ignite the fire I went 1500 miles back to where I grew up and photographed from the angles of a child, places I played as a child.

I returned to my studio with hundreds of pictures. An unintended process with unexpected results became the foundation of my latest work. 1st I put all my pictures in my computer to develop references to paint from. I cropped them until I had the desired view and then changed the lighting to achieve the desired feel. I then removed the color from the pictures and colored them to my liking. In essence I may have taken a gray morning and made it a sunny afternoon. A picture of a neighborhood may have been cropped to the passageway between 2 houses and a yellow boat may have been changed to red.

Now I had a reference photo of what I wanted to paint but financially I couldn’t take the time to paint them. My solution was to get commissions to paint what I wanted. My avenue was to take my reference photos, alter them on the computer to make them look more like paintings and then show previous clients what the proposed painting would resemble. I hit the road and didn’t any commissions but people loved the photography. The problem is I wasn’t a photographer, I knew nothing about photography, had nothing brilliant to say, had no concept of lenses, proper lighting, speeds or what ever else photographers talk about. When people asked what my secret was ‘IDUNNO’ was about as smooth as I could be. I saw something I liked and snapped a picture. It was very natural and smooth. Still I was a painter not a photographer. I wanted to paint. The pictures weren’t my product but a tool used to create my product from. I was disappointed that I had run out of money and time. I was disappointed they loved my photography. Stupid isn’t it? I’m an artist with an art studio, an art business and an art following. I knew nothing about nor did I want to be a photographer. My art following didn’t like my new ideas. The people who liked my photography didn’t like my art. I had to prove myself all over again. Most of my prior work was as I said earlier loose and it didn’t prove I had the capabilities to paint what I was proposing. I had the capabilities but not the time. These works take longer and I was asking for money sight unseen. I was broke and desperate enough to come up with a hair brain idea that worked. As far as I know I was the first artist to sell his reference photo’s as limited edition giclees. The sale of my reference photo’s became quite popular and afforded me the time to paint the actual picture. To produce the quality of the originals demanded a lot of time and there for had to reflect in price, making them not affordable for every one who I wished to enjoy them. To solve this issue I printed limited edition giclees on canvas of the paintings. In order to give the art lover more of the look and feel of the original I went back and hand embellished the giclees. To me it is not about making money. It is about being able to afford to do what I love and share it with others.

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