Ian Scott paintings

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 35

Ian Scott paintings

Paintings by lan Scott at the Canterbury Society of Arts until May 19. Reviewed by John Hurrell. Six recent paintings by the Auckland artist, lan Scott, are displayed in the mezzanine floor of the C.S.A. gallery. Using the flat, bold colour and carefully designed shapes that he is well known for, Scott seems to be aiming at a form of figurative imagery that is related in content, surprisingly enough, to the Shoto-surrealist, Brent fong. Some of Wong’s wellknown paintings feature three-dimensioned geometrical shapes floating in the sky above impeccably rendered, dry, grassy hills. Scott’s paintings in this show use very stylised and flattened forms, and depict geometrical, lattice-like motifs, which are possibly of Islamic derivation. They are suspended above receding landforms suggestive of desert buttes or plateaux. These landforms are tonally gradated in three stages, from white primer down to raw unpainted canvas at the

bottom edge. Above the horizon, the sky and the angular symbols are intensely coloured in vivid contrast with raw, unprimed sections of the canvas, and the soft tones of the curved landscape.

Because the choice of colours appears to be unconnected with the “given” canvas colour, the landscape and the spiritual symbols represent antithetical qualities. There is no hint of heaven and earth reflecting each other in the Taoist sense; here the dry land is a foil for the richly coloured sky. Outside of formalist analysis, the meaning of these paintings can be interpreted a number of ways. They may, for instance, be a comment on Modernism’s suppression of the spiritual symbolism that resides in the heart of hardedged abstraction. The motivation behind the painting of twentieth century pioneers such as Malevich and Mondrian lies in theosophical values. In historical assessments of such artists,

the spiritual aspirations have been down played, and the visual qualities elevated. These works might be trying to reverse that modernist practice. They also could be a sly comment on the New Zealand myth of the spiritual importance of the land. The dissimilar natures of earth and sky may be a dig at New Zealnd regionalism in painting. These are provocative and eccentric paintings which are hard to categorise. They look slightly dated, as if based on some fabric design of the early 60s, and are not as decoratively appealing as his grid paintings. They are more related to his “bikini girl” paintings of many years ago. Scott is an artist who has always experimented with both ends of the hue and tone spectrums. These works combine the extremes to make a statement which is quite disinterested in many ways with visual concerns. It is worth experiencing in person.