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| Sam Scott, photo by Bernard Plossu |
When
we called on Sam Scott at this hand-built Santa Fe adobe a few months ago, he
impressed us as a friendly, bear of a man.
Tall and broad shouldered with a mop of brown hair and a heavy mustache,
he was wearing the clothes of a working painter—paint splattered overalls and
black work shoes. His living room is
warm and cluttered with friends’ art (a Larry Bell vapor drawing, a Paul Caponigro
photo of a Japanese temple), books (Art
and Artist, by Otto Rank, The Village
Voice Anthology, tomes on DeKooning, Picasso, Cezanne), records, tapes, art
supplies, coffee cups. He made us a cup
of tea, talked briefly about the past, learning that he first moved to Santa Fe
in the late ‘60s, then to Arizona in the late ‘70s where he taught art for five
years at the University of Arizona, before returning last year to the red clay
that still tenaciously grips his art roots.
Then we slipped into an easy and wide ranging discussion of art and
ideas.
Here’s an easy question—what do you
do and why do you do it?
(Laugh
followed by long pause) Well, I’ve been
painting since I was a child. So I’m
doing what I’ve always done. There were
some side trips, some questioning about the commitment, because it’s a
frightening commitment to make, but it’s always been something I knew I had to
do. Why do I paint? That’s simple, too. It’s the glue that holds the world together
for me. I wouldn’t know what to do if I
wasn’t painting.
What do you paint?
(Long
pause) Well, the interesting thing about
art is that the part that really matters is the part you can’t speak about
(laugh). Right? If we’re all interested in the fascinating
thing of our . . . extraordinary privilege of being sentient beings . . .
There’s all this methane out there and ice, and we exist on this moment of
space-time, what an extraordinary privilege it is to be a sentient being, to
have this exclusive human consciousness.
I think that there are many functions of art. Art is big, it’s not little. One function of art that interests me above
all others that can be addressed in the art of painting is to experience
experience. If it is that, then it’s a
statement of wonder before experience.
Then it’s celebrative, and in a way it’s art destroying itself. The painting is a snakeskin, a cicada shell,
a souvenir. What really matters is how
you feel when you’re painting.
You say “wonder before experience”?
As
witnessing, as in front of.
On your knees?
Yes. You’re right with me. This is going to be fun. Painting is about consciousness. It’s a very moral statement, and that’s why
Rothko wasn’t talking about light when he talked about the central issue of vibrato
in a painting. He was talking about
something that was in the late works of Mozart.
For some reason this discussion
reminds me of a quote I read some months ago in the New Yorker. The article was examining the controversy
over the legitimacy of psychoanalysis, and the writer said, “The unexamined life
may not be worth living, but living the examined life is only possible for a
moment at a time.”
That’s
interesting. I think painting connects
both modalities, balances them. Do you
know Allen Bleimtraub’s Parable of the
Beast? It’s an analogue between
behavioral characteristics of animals, and he was interested in what he calls
significant time. The common Rocky
Mountain wood tick, in its juvenile life, will go out to the end of a twig and
there go into a somniferous trance – however long it takes, ten, 20 years, it
doesn’t matter. The moment that it
senses a certain collection of molecules that translate as animal sweat, it
instantly is galvanized into action and leaps into space. And this is what Bleimtraub calls significant
time. So in reference to your quote,
both things are true, and I might add to that a quote by Helen Keller who said
that life must be a high adventure or it’s not worth living. I guess what we’re getting at is the idea of
painting as a parable for a fulcrum that exists between those disparate
parts. Tillich uses a Spanish phrase, salto mortal, the leap of faith, or
the mortal leap, that moment of movement between the known and the unknown,
which essentially is the painter’s job, any artist’s job, going from the known
to the unknown.
You said over the years you’ve been
on a number of side trips. Were those
significant times?
Some
of it was, some of it wasn’t. When I was
in seminary that was very significant.
When I was in landscape architecture, it was a disaster. These were things that happened while I was
on my way to making a commitment as an artist.
It often seems that creative people
go through those periods where they check out, either do nothing or do
something unconnected with their creative endeavor, to recharge or refresh.
We’re
electrical beings, our minds are alpha charges, our lives are always in some
aspect dealing with the nutritive or the generative. When you push hard enough, then you need to
go to the nutritive, to receive, or else you don’t have anything to paint
about. As De Kooning said, “You can’t be
a painting machine.” If he had become a
painting machine, he wouldn’t have the greatness he has now. This glass of juice here (in his hand)—until
it’s full, it can’t spill over. So fill
it up!
What are your work habits?
I’m
a compulsive painter, but I like the luxury of a routine. I need it.
I like to get up early, 5:30, and I like good coffee, go for a run with
my dog. That time while I’m running is
preparation. I run an hour . . . I
regard myself as a weather painter, and it’s important for me to know what the
day’s going to be like. The weather of the day has to do with the kind of
painting I’ll do. I like that link-up,
immediacy. Then I come back, make lunch
for my kids (he has two sons, 5 and 12), get them off to school, and try hard
to get into the studio by 9. It’s a 9 to
5 trip. Some nights I like to be with
the kids, be close to the fire, and I’ll do watercolors on the table here. I just got a real nice Eaton press, so I’ll
be doing linocuts at night and woodblocks.
The time when I’m not with my kids I’ll go down to the studio. In terms of the life stuff, I give over
Mondays to paying bills, correspondence, laundry, and grocery shopping, and
write off the studio that day. So I have
four very clean days and optional weekend time.
It’s important that I work as a painter like a truck driver works or a
plumber or anyone else. Working seriously.
Discipline is freedom. Otherwise,
you’re a slave to time. Art is about the
language of freedom, and the only way to get it is to take it. It’s not given.
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| Black Angel (detail), oil on canvas, triptych, 66 x 240 inches |
That’s not a comfortable notion for
many people. Maybe that’s why artists
sometimes have a bad reputation.
I
think they have a bad reputation—and we deserve it—first because the first job
of the artist is to be a criminal, and by that I mean an agent of change. Reagan’s not a friend of the artist. Working against a clearly defined social
order to try and enlarge consciousness.
I don’t know about much else than painting, but I see it as a
clandestine activity. It’s meant to be a
direct action questioning the status quo.
Has it always been that way?
Always. From the first moments of the ritual magic
men, it’s been understood that painting taps into the essence of our
consciousness that is outside time and history.
Art is not additive, it’s subtractive, peeling off layers.
I
don’t blame people who want that! I want
a warm fire and enough food for the winter, too! (Laughter)
But it’s interesting. I got a
very nice letter from my sister who is a social anthropologist, about this very
question. The fact is that the artist is
not meant to “fit.” He does fit, but not
sometimes where we would like to fit, which is there with a rabbit cooking over
the fire. Unfortunately, where we fit is
at the edge, and you can be pretty damn unhappy until you recognize that
fact. The situation for any young
artist—let’s say under 30, in my case under 40 [Scott is 44]—is you have to understand
very clearly that your position is on the outside. If you want to be an artist and have the
cake, you’ve got to forget it. What
disturbs me about younger artists is to hear them complaining. If you’re going to make the decision to make
art, then you have to have the maturity to accept the responsibility for that
decision. Understand the consequences,
and know there is going to be a great deal of pain. Ultimately, you’re giving yourself permission
to live where art is. If you can stop
worrying about whether you’re an artist or not, it ends up being that where you
are is where art is. Strange, but it
works that way.
As in so many other aspects of
life, it’s a kind of surrender.
All
aspects of knowledge say that over and over again—that you must die unto yourself
to be born. The story of Christ, the Upanishads, Koran, Vendetic passages, the Hopi . . . it doesn’t change.
When you’re painting, do you strive
for or feel the ecstasy we associate with religious experience?
I’m
not comfortable with the romantic sound of that, but it’s a fact. Why else would I live such a goofy life? There must be a payoff somewhere, and it’s in
that feeling. Ecstasy and surrender seem
to be intertwined.
I felt that connection some months
ago when a friend was teaching me to rappel.
That business of getting out on the rock and trusting the rope, going
through the panic and saying, “I surrender,” and then the ecstasy of going
down.
And
did you notice the way you felt about the sky and the surface of the rock, the
wind . . . Was ever anything so right?
You’ve got all that vertical exposure . . . Crazy, some people might
say, but I think it’s the ultimate sanity.
There’s nothing like it.
You’ve been doing a lot of
monotypes lately. That’s an easy medium,
isn’t it?
Yes. In ’78 I was showing with Marilyn Butler and
saw some monotypes Nathan Olivera had done, and they blew me away. He works very differently than I do, he does
multiple drops, and I’m very interested in a single drop, bringing everything
you have as an artist to the situation, a and if it’s not good you rip it. I like that.
It’s a natural medium for a gestural painter, but also nice is this
sense of high rolling.
Do you think of yourself as a
gambler?
I
wouldn’t be comfortable with that . . . Again, that sounds a little romantic,
like Kenny Rogers.
Do you go to the track?
I
do (laughter). Let’s just say I think
that horses have the right to make me a living (more laughter). Actually, I go on the shirttails of a friend
here in Santa Fe. I ride his bets. I brought home an extraordinary $73 last
summer. With the monotypes, so much is
riding on the situation—it’s about $400 a day to be in there, someone’s putting
trust in your professionalism, you’ve got assistants standing around, four
plates in rotation. I like that milieu,
I feel confident in it. It’s intense
pleasure. It’s a collaborative thing, a very nice give and take between the
artist and the printers—though that’s a misnomer. The printers are artists. Trying to come to a purity of intention
together. I like that.
You like solitude, too, working
alone in the studio.
Yeah.
Why did you come back to Santa Fe?
Well,
the walls here (gesturing about the studio) are draft cards, pot shards, a lot
of my history. I think it’s kind of
important—when you live in a house that you’ve built, it’s a special
experience. Also, I feel I came of age
as an artist here, with my friends here.
I came to Santa Fe in 1969.
Looking back I think I had the content of what I wanted to do, but I
didn’t have the ability yet to manifest it.
I went through all my changes here.
Back then Bob Ewing was the curator at the museum, and incredibly
dynamic curator who was always in the artists’ studios. It wasn’t paralyzed the way it is now. Everyone was excited and working, and there weren’t
really any art galleries in town at the time. The first with any concern for
contemporary issues was the Janus Gallery.
But I came into myself here, and after teaching five years in the
desert, I wanted to come back to where things galvanized, to start a new
cycle. I know I wasn’t going to be
teaching forever, it was preparation for full-time painting, even though I was
painting full-time there. I’m a
Southwest painter. Like Michael
Jenkinson said, it’s the land of clear light—it’s Arizona, New Mexico, Guaymas,
the Gulf, up to red rock country of the San Juan river. This is my country.
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| Ring of Bone, oil on canvas, 66 x 80 inches |
(We
moved from the living room downstairs to Scott’s studio where he pulled several
large paintings from storage racks. Most
of the works contain highly energized color and gesture, and a wide variety of
textures, from thin, elegant washes to heavy, creamy passages. The first painting was Ring of Bone, and we asked about the origin of the strong, central
image.)
Where did the title come from,
Ring of Bone?
(Poet)
Gary Snyder, who’s been important to me.
It’s a line from one of his poems, it fit. The painting is about rites of passage, time,
in the context of where we live. It’s
about a sacred site, a celebrative one, a place where energies converge. This image wouldn’t have come out of New York
City. You know, as a painter you’re a
thief—you have to steal hearts. It’s
strange. I want to paint for people that
have passionate eyes. Now sometimes you
hear people say—especially in academic circles—that abstraction denies
information, communication. But
“abstract” means to distill truth, from the Greek. You’re dealing with the essence rather than
the appearance. Which do you want? But you always have to be held by the
classical rules of composition, our human sense of order on the amorphous swarm
of things.
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