Full Circle

Figurative painter Richard Thomas Scott’s exhibition at Spalding Nix Fine Art tells the story of his progression as an artist and human being.

- Alyssa M. Tidwell

Richard Thomas Scott grew up in Conyers, Georgia, a rural town outside of Atlanta. Although nowadays the town is part of the metropolitan sprawl of Atlanta, back in Scott’s youth it was a secluded place. Growing up, Scott wasn’t exposed to art, or much of anything for that matter. “I don’t think I’d met anyone who wasn’t from America,” he reflects. “Norman Rockwell’s paintings convey the very idealized view of what America could be—I grew up in the shadow of that. The underbelly of the Norman Rockwell rural ideal.”

Described as one of the “New Old Masters,” Scott paints in the realm of figurative realism, his emotionally charged portraits, historical and quasi-historical scenes channeling the aesthetic of Rembrandt and the Dutch masters. He looks to portray raw human experiences—love, joy, sorrow, loss and anger, holding a magnifying glass to the good and, more importantly, the difficult stories that humanity does not want to confront. This is the core of Scott’s work.

The first person in his immediate family to go to college, Scott attended Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, receiving his BFA in painting, before moving on to New York Academy of Art for his MFA. Establishing a literal and figurative distance from his hometown was important for Scott at that time. He explains, “I think that growing up I wanted to get as far away as I could from Georgia and the culture in which I grew up.” The artist adds that it was his way of escaping what he viewed as a dead-end life at the time. It was only after returning from a three-year stint working with his living hero Odd Nerdrum in Stavern, Norway, and Paris, France, that he began to value the experience of growing up in a pastoral Georgian town.