Provenance:
Private Collection, Auckland Purchased from Ferner Galleries, Auckland 2002

Ian Scott's New Zealand Paintings Series began in 1990 and was added to periodically over the ensuing two decades. The series was first and foremost a way of trying to make new-looking paintings. Usually, painters use unofficial "rules" of composition to make their paintings appear unified and therefore satisfying to the eye. They will make sure the various parts of the painting are evenly balanced or in proportion, and that everything seems to belong naturally to the whole. Scott felt that to follow such "rules" would mean to make pictures people were already familiar with - pictures that were "good" in an old-fashioned predictable way, lacking the potential to surprise the viewer or offer a genuinely new kind of experience. Scott also felt that the contrasting colours and cultures of New Zealand could be a blueprint for what he was after. So he took hold of readily recognisable images that carried dissimilar values and associations - emblematic images of native bush and beaches, the difficult and awkward art of Colin McCahon, pressing them together in daring and eccentric combinations that dazzle the eye, provoke strong feelings and set up tantalising puzzles. This method also allowed Scott to choose and produce images to suit his own sensibility and style; dashing off virtuoso renderings of McCahon's paintings; mapping out boldly coloured squares, and printing onto them photographs of the West Auckland environment in which he grew up. These paintings are a remarkable synthesis of Scott's feeling for vibrant abstract forms and colours (evident in his celebrated Lattice paintings) with his lifetime love of the New Zealand landscape. Ed Hanfling