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Scott's Bio:
Superficially there is negligence, but deep down in people there is love and craving for the beautiful. There are many who go through their whole lives without ever knowing when they have liked or what they have liked. - Robert Henri
"I am richly blessed to be making a living doing the things I love most," says Loveland artist, Scott Freeman. Born and raised in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, Scott displayed a unique giftedness from childhood. “I wanted to be an artist for as long as I can remember wanting to be anything,” says Scott, “Though neither I nor my parents had a clue as to what that would entail”.
Scott attended art college at the Kansas City Art Institute, in Kansas City, Missouri. He received his Bachelor of Fine Art Degree in 1982 with a major in Painting/Printmaking. In 1984 he married fellow painter Mollie Walker, and, with the arrival of their first child, felt he needed to make a transition from fine art to commercial illustration. His varied career has included 2 years teaching at a small, private school; 3 ½ years as a designer/glass painter at a stained glass studio in Kansas City;
3 years running his own illustration studio; and nearly 10 years at Hallmark Cards, Inc. in Kansas City, working as an artist/designer.
“At the time I was there, Hallmark was an amazing place in which to work,” says Scott. In many ways it was like an artist’s playground. I was given the opportunity to explore a variety of creative media including raku pottery, blacksmithing/welding, woodcarving, bowl-turning, and found-object sculpture. I even got to take a workshop with Diego Romero, a Cochiti Pueblo Indian potter who taught us low-tech burnishing and firing techniques. (“Don’t get me wrong – I did actually work during my time there!” Scott adds.)
Perhaps most significantly, twice Scott was sent “out West” on week long painting excursions where he took the opportunity to paint the western landscape “en plein air” for the first time. “I had loved the western landscape since childhood, but actually getting to paint it on location really got to me,” remembers Scott. “My first attempts were full of frustration, but the relatively few moments when things did come together were some of the most satisfying creative moments of my life up to that point.” A couple of years later, when Hallmark went through a corporate restructuring, Scott left Hallmark and moved his wife and five children to Loveland, Colorado where they now make their home.
“After living in the inner city of Kansas City for some 22 years, life in a town where the tallest building is a grain elevator has been a wonderful change,” observes Scott. “The kids have more freedom to run, and it’s relatively safe for a woman to walk the streets here after dark. Actually…women walked the streets at night where we lived before, but they wore really skimpy clothes and were way too friendly”. Here, where the plains meet the mountains, and the people are just friendly enough, Scott and Mollie attempt to pursue their creative vision.
Scott painting on the last leg of an 8 day float on the Green River in Utah.
Scott’s Artist Statement:
Updated 5/2007
To be "creative," in the only meaningful sense, may mean nothing more than the refusal to be habit-ridden. - Wolf Kahn
Recently, I invited a band of invisible monkeys to take up residence in my studio.
Their names are Intuitive, Spontaneous, and Unplanned. It goes against my methodical nature to let them out much, but I'm slowly getting accustomed to having them around. They can be pretty irritating company at times, and have ruined a couple of "nice" paintings, but they help me to loosen up. When they're out, and we all work together, I'm able to go beyond what I can predictably achieve and instead achieve something extraordinary in paint. While the small studies I do in the field still serve as a jumping-off point for my larger landscape paintings, increasingly, it is in the studio where the magic happens.
As a painter, my natural tendency is toward picky representationalism. However, that is not what I am most drawn to. Extreme representation holds little mystery for me, either as a painter or an art appreciator. On the other hand, pure abstraction holds too much mystery for me and is therefore often inaccessable.
These two polarities, pure representationalism, and pure abstractionism are metaphorical of life for me. As human beings we are not purely physical like the animals. Nor are we purely spiritual like the angels. We are unique in all of creation
in that we are physical beings invested with spirits that are part of who we are as individuals. We walk with one foot in the physical world and one foot in the spiritual, and if we attempt to walk in one of these worlds only, we find ourselves bumping against the other whether we like it or not. This is a part of what it means to be human. In my pursuit of a visual language that expresses my human experience, I find myself drawn to art where divergent spectral elements are orchestrated into a unified statement.
Inspiring painters who come to mind include Rembrandt, Rouault, Chagall, Klimpt, Redon, Puvis, Balthus, and Wolf Kahn. Photographers who inspire me include the Photo-Secessionists, and Robert Parke-Harrison.
What interests me most as an artist, then, is the intersection where two opposing ends of a spectrum meet and exist in dynamic tension: the place where representational and abstract; naive and sophisticated; rational and intuitive; figure and symbol; populist and elitist, and physical and spiritual converge. This is where I attempt to paint. my studio paintings are an attempt to balance, harmonize, and unify these disparate elements in a way that satisfies my aesthetic sense on a visceral level. |
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