Featured Artist: Ian Scott

This month's featured artist's we first met during the Thomas Moran Fellowship hosted at Bear Lake. Ian Scott's talent combines the romanticism of sublime landscapes with fairytale-like playfulness.

Growing up in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, Ian Scott was surrounded by natural beauty, right in his backyard. This fostered a love for the outdoors and instilled in Ian a deep connection to nature conservation, art, and God. Art has always been a vital part of his identity, but it was in high school when he first considered art as his career after selling his work at community art shows. Ian’s greatest influences are early 19th century landscape painters, particularly Thomas Moran. He aims to achieve Moran’s level of craft, philosophy, and solid form in landscape painting that has disappeared in the last century.

Ian’s hope for his landscape paintings is they will be more than simply a pretty view; they should instead tell a story; capture multiple events over time and communicate an idea rather then a snap shot of one moment. “I want viewers to pay special attention to the trees. They have spirits with ages of experience to learn from. I want viewers to feel something sacred about these places and feel a need to preserve them.”

All of Ian’s paintings are from places he has explored and developed an emotional connection with.The final works are partially  invented from a collection of sketches, photos experiences, and the emotions attached to the location. climbing a mountain on skiis or treading a trail through a canyon are just as much a part of his creative process as mixing colors.

Ian studied art at BYU-Idaho, attended the Masters Academy, and currently studies at the Beaux Arts Academy.