Bill Scott at Mangel - Philadelphia

Art in America, Nov, 2002 by Emily Bowles

In his latest exhibition at Mangel, Bill Scott presented new abstracted landscapes and garden scenes inspired by both real and imaginary settings. In Summer Flowers (all works acrylic on paper, 2001), bursts of greens, yellows, pinks and purples crowd the work's surface with exuberant blooms. While this piece retains the Fauvist colors and allover brushwork of Scott's paintings of the last decade, many of the show's remaining eight works, most 40 by 32 or 40 by 60 inches, revealed the artist's shift toward airier compositions and an earthier palette.

Tamalpais's loosely painted cubes of brown, pine-green and slate-gray marvelously evoke the wooded trails and fog-shrouded overlooks of the northern California mountain that is its namesake. The work is evidence of Scott's move toward both richer tones and a freer arrangement of forms. Generous areas of exposed pale-gray paper give a tangible atmosphere and a deep space for the artist's colors to inhabit.

Scott's self-described "nearsighted realism" seems to me better characterized as 21st-century abstract impressionism. Swaths of olive green and mustard yellow dance freely across sand-colored paper in Pastorale, while Storm Wind's gestural blocks of azure, tangerine and pewter wrestle in Hofmannesque push-pull fashion.

The most engaging pieces on view showed a pronounced darkening of Scott's palette. Passing Bell is an eerie composition of fossil-gray verticals supporting gray, red and purple ovoids, punctuated with shocks of orange. A standout work in the show, it made me think of what a densely packed field of poppies would look like by moonlight. In Untitled Landscape, bright, flowerlike forms are threatened by an ominous area of black overtaking them from the left. The looming mass might be a storm, nightfall or pollution; in any case, the effect is undeniably foreboding.

Although his familiar cheery hues now share space with somber ones, the black, grays and browns Scott is using of late intensify the colors they encroach upon. Enriched by dramatic contrasts, his oeuvre has expanded to include works that are pensive and even moody at times, yet glimpses of Scott's irrepressible joie de vivre still poke through.