Painting, 1959
Although born in Scotland, Scott studied art in both Belfast and London. Like Henry Mundy (b.1919) he was a prize winner in the prestigious John Moores exhibition the year this picture was painted. Scott's paintings of still life's in the late 1940s and early '50s led to a brief experimentation with pure abstraction. He progressed on to arrangements of simple shapes on a flat ground which, like the Ferens' painting, are reminiscent of pots, pans and other household items. Scott chose to paint still life's of ordinary kitchen utensils partly because they are so ordinary that they can be treated as shapes and nothing else. The title of the work, Painting, probably refers to the process as well as the object. Scott has divided the canvas into four rectangular quarters, making 'fields' of colour with a brush and palette knife.
