Philadelphia painter, Bill Scott, who finds a place in the book Abstract Painting: Concepts and Techniques, discusses his working methods in regard to his exhibition at the Rider University Art Gallery, Lawrenceville in New Jersey. As we have discussed in the book, a great deal of abstraction crosses over a threshold to embrace references to nature or skirts the boundary of representation.
When in the interview Professor Naar asks Scott about his attraction to the work of Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot, Scott says he was drawn to the aliveness of her work and her juxtaposition of color. He refers to her several paintings of a cherry tree that she considered her best. He tells Naar he was perturbed he wasn’t quite able to understand the paintings in the way he’d hoped. “So over the past eight years, I’ve made an ongoing series of paintings and color intaglio prints loosely based on these, including the painting ‘The Fourth Cherry Tree’ (2012) and the color print ‘The Cherry Tree III’ (2015). These works are in this exhibit. They are vertical renderings of shapes and marks. “The Cherry Tree III,” an aquatint with drypoint and etching, comprises vertical leaning lines and other geometric and organic shapes in the colors of nature against a background of pink and orange. “The Fourth Cherry Tree,” an oil on canvas measures 65 x 34″ and is a dramatic upward sweep of brilliant red, orange, yellow and green rising to turquoise and purple.