An Introduction to the Art of Iris Scott

The arrival of spring in the Big Apple was marked by the first personalized exhibition of Iris Scott - The Door is Open Mind the Cat. Having started a completely new stage in her career, introducing her old works cut into pieces, thus making a kind of photomontages on canvas, a young painter fantasized a brand new future. “Her work touches people in a deeply meaningful way”, admits lower east side-based Filo Sofi Art gallery owner prior to displaying Iris’ images and makes us overwhelmed by the desire to look through the Artist’s lifework.

After getting a deep insight into arts and brushing up various painting techniques at the birthplace of Renaissance alias Italy, Iris, sort of restricted by the idea of serious artists, ignoring at that “happy” creativity, decided to head to Asia, specifically to Taiwan, in order to broaden her craftsmanship and perhaps, to continue looking on bright side. A-year-long, somewhat refreshing and artistic know-how enhancing process, in its turn, caused a tremendous transformation in Iris’ fine art-related performance. Spending months on creating tons of work, one fine day, when there were no clean brushes left to put finishing touches to her sunflowers, a young painter committed herself to paint… yes, painting… but using as the main tool her own fingers instead. This “blessing in disguise” moment appeared to play a revolutionary role not only for a 26-year-old girl herself but in the evolution of the new-day art as well, which welcomed one more, just even the tiniest yet cutting-edge step in its development. From the very moment of making first movements with the tips of her fingers, Iris, marvellously delighted by such unique experience, came to a strong conclusion to indulge in this technique for the rest of her life. And this certainly worked. For more than 8 years now, she has been utilizing this unequalled style that today is justly associated with her name.

Born to a family of free spirits, Iris enjoyed a relatively calm and joyful childhood in a neighbourhood of Seattle, WA. Besides spending much time outside playing with her younger sibling, she appeared to reveal particular inclinations towards painting. She was said to be a talented artist starting from these early years, however, a barefoot girl with blonde ringlets and charming smile, cuddled up to her cat, Foxy, in her home-based studio, seems to have a somewhat different opinion: “I don’t really believe that people are born just with gifts to paint and even though as a youngster I was labelled as a gifted kid In art, looking back, I was practicing way more than everyone else…. And the gift label helped me stay motivated, but…I didn’t really need it at all”. Picasso once wrote “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”. It is clear, that this problem is solved by the American painter’s flourishing career. Actually, Iris Scott did not have any necessity to be announced gifted, perhaps, because we are dealing with an inborn aptness here. On the other hand, it is truly impossible to disregard the importance of practice that pretty much always does miracles. While in Taiwan, Iris used to paint every single day, capture the itsy-bitsy moments of everyday life that through introducing to canvas, represented a nearly perfect fusion of European-born impressionistic tendencies and a wonderful vividness of saturating chromatic effects, definitely taking its origins from the exotic Asian landscapes.

Art-nurturing ideas come from everywhere, at times even from the rubbish outside. Being almost intertwined with the peaceful ambience of her Brooklyn-based apartment, allowing the inventive finger-painter to fully interpret incredible balance in her works, no less stimulating appears the skimpy borough itself. The hustle and bustle of the surrounding world, perhaps, strengthens the consistent equilibrium of her pieces, that due to such “happy, abundant, clean, naturalistic “ character may seem to many viewers related to some imaginary universe.

 Indeed, oil painting without brushes proposes limitless possibilities to paraphrase the world. Facilitating artist’s monthly or yearly-long labor by allowing to swiftly change colors or the whole picture’s overall direction, finger-painting, according to this matchless individual experience, manifests at that a kind of hallucinogenic connotations leading its viewer to an obvious contentment. Hence, Iris’ works, in addition to being displayed at various art spaces, are hanged on the walls of a couple of healing institutions, as well.

Taking main inspirations from nature, Iris gives visible predominance to water-related motives in her works. Permanently interchanging turquoise, blue, violet and purple, gathered for the purpose to evoke transparent liquid-filled, rainwater or vibrant driblet-suffused aura, communicate the path that directly conducts us into Iris’ world. Rain and water due to their transient character have become principal objects of interest for hundreds of impressionistic painters, albeit Iris’ “flooded” works, still maintaining the detail-oriented precision, seem to have a kind of cleansing strength, an individual magnetism, because of which you long for immersing in this as good as human-sized aquatic realm. Such exuberance leading us to a totally different dimension, is somewhat overbalanced by shimmering images of the Artist’s dog, Bawdy, starring her numerous works and making them intelligible in terms of their relationship to our earthly life. However, Iris Scott, uncovering her evolutionary road since 2010, has never intended to observe present day world. At top of her mind has always been future expressed via peculiar iridescence.

Although the Seattle-born artist screwed up some of her traditional ways of creating artworks, she has stayed consistent over the course of her life journey: she never quits gravitating towards color that embodies main component of her formal language as well as career-long subject matter. Tons of intensely hued and splashy pictures, brought into existence throughout the last decade, truly represent sort of celebration of future and optimism. Embracing simple moments of everyday life, Iris Scott reaches incredible heights by accurately “carving” with her blessed fingers each detail, even the minor one, thus finding a great way to both beautify and beatify just a twinkling in a time. Iris’s pictures require profound and an exclusively aesthetical perception. These treasured pieces lack narrative character and by delineating explicit boundaries from conceptual artworks present to us genuine results of visual art. Watching these multiple groundbreaking images accumulated in one space, a viewer here is free from any ideological concerns and extensive afterthoughts or contemplations, thus being able to breathe again through the agency of the ingenious technique and brilliant chromatic paradise. Such an exceptional relationship of the Painter with color offers an awe-inspiring ‘visual hug’, inviting you to the future. This hug will definitely warm you up. 

Having taught herself how to paint in this unique fashion, Iris Scott is unable to hide her great enthusiasm towards educating amateurs as well as beginners via social media-based videos that have already deserved truly appropriate feedback. 

‘Creativity takes courage’. So does the creation of one’s own world. Iris Scott’s intrepid example, promising a bright future, just one more time elucidates these words.