“I Stood There Once” Exhibition

Hollis Taggart Contemporary

[Image: Bill Scott "I Stood There Once" 40 x 55 1/2 in.]

This event has ended.

We look forward to our tenth solo exhibition of artist Bill Scott, I Stood There Once.

Bill Scott creates abstract paintings imbued with vibrant colors, hints of flora and fauna, and references to nineteenth-century French masters and Fauvism. His works are inspired by natural forms, as well as fleeting moments glimpsed through his windows and mundane scenes encountered on his walks. These new paintings bear Scott’s characteristic palette and spirited abstraction, while signaling a fresh exploration of compositional possibilities. A recurring motif in this body of work is the circle, which the artist tentatively thinks of as “placeholders for flowers or another form… a circle can also simply be a way for the painting, or a part of it, to remain momentarily afloat.” Indeed, buoyancy is a sensibility that weaves through his works; Scott has described his uplifting, high-key color palette also in terms of its ability to “act as a buoy to keep [him] afloat.”

While the artist received his formal education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1974 to 1979 (where he also later taught), he credits his time spent with artists Joan Mitchell and Jane Piper for profoundly influencing his practice. Scott has exhibited widely over the past three decades at museums that include Swarthmore College, Hollins University, the State Museum of Pennsylvania, the National Academy Museum, and the University of Delaware. Major public collections with Scott’s work include Cleveland Museum of Art, Delaware Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Museum of Art, and Woodmere Art Museum. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, ARTnews, The New York Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.