Meet Adam Francis Scott | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Adam Francis Scott and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Adam Francis, what role has risk played in your life or career?
Risk is the main engine of my art practice. Painting is risky. Going to the studio every day is risky. Painting serves no purpose other than delineating porous zones of becoming. The artists I look up to, have all taken major risks with their work. I see risk as an ethical necessity within my studio practice. The risk in painting is to push outside of my comfort zone, to create new trajectories of visual, painterly, and somatic knowledge. Often this painterly knowledge comes to us in ways that we are not prepared to receive. Risk is critical to the longevity of the work’s lifespan within contemporary coordinates of cultural production. Risk is what makes art its own particular organism in relation to other zones of cultural inquiry. Painting by its very nature is a pataphysical entity, serving as a framework for divergent thinking, adrenalizing creativity and new ways of seeing the world. Painting is quite a risky proposition within our current cultural moment. To paint a picture is to ask a question with a question, on a move-by-move basis.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I’ve always been interested in the what, when, where, who, and why, of painting. Showing up to the studio is the job. Listening to your process is the job. Painting is not easy. I allow the paintings to evolve over time. I paint to know what I’m painting about. Its not about feelings, or my narrative. Its about an interaction with material, color, light, within an improvisational moment. Staying with the process is critical. I want to paint to the brink of the telligible. Painting is an extension of my body and nerve endings into the world.

Painting shares a lot with many of other art forms. Painting shares a lot with music, writing, sculpture, etc. all kinds of other art forms. Painting has one unique characteristic, it’s history is embedded below the surface. A musician will change a composition and that change is invisible to us when we hear the piece, it’s the same with a writer leaving out a a paragraph or changing a character and i could go down the list. . . painting is unique in this history, and that makes painting very special! In a picture it could be a little bit of a color that comes through in a corner that’s been repainted. It could be the edge of the canvas which we always kind of look at, all painters do it, it could be the light that’s coming through from a bright color through a neutral color, those are all the living presences of the history of a painting in those layers, and i think that makes painting very unique.

My painting is a door, a boundary condition, a threshold between two realities, the actual and the virtual. Painting is archaic, older than history itself. My painting practice is haptic, the merger of hand and eye, a demonstration of optical and material intelligence. My painting is an invocation of color. Color is pigment, color is light, and color is a spectrum of physical properties. Bob Dylan said music is based on hexagrams vegetables and death, those same fundamentals apply to my painting. Every painting of I make is a story, every story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order. Painting is logical, a logic of sense, the merger of common sense and nonsense, part carpentry and part catastrophe.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
When friends come into town, I’d start with a visit to Museum Of Jurassic Technology, then pop over for a pizza at Roberta’s in Culver City. The next day I’d take them to the Getty Villa and end up at Neptune’s net and watch the surfers and sunset! I’d suggest that we catch some jamz at Zebulon or Permanent Records Roadhouse. Miya, Jitlada, Woon, Pine and Crane, Night & Market Song are all goto spots for great dinners! I love the Vincent Price Art Museum on the Campus of East LA College. After checking out an exhibition at VPAM I’d take a friend to lunch at Carnitas El Momo, or Evil Cooks in El Sereno. I also love Firstborn in Chinatown. I’d suggest we catch a film at Vidiots in Eagle Rock, after that we could to grab some Indian-Mexican fusion at Saucy Chick Indi-Mex Eatery in Pasadena!

La Loma Projects, Megan Mulrooney Gallery, Philip Martin Gallery, Charlie James Gallery, South Willard, Regen Projects, Hauser and Wirth, and David Zwirner, David Kordansky, and The Pit are all great places to catch some contemporary art! We would attempt to hit all of them!!! I love taking visitors to the Stahl House, it is perched at the top of the Hollywood Hills, above Sunset Boulevard, and has views from the Pacific Ocean to downtown. Stahl House one of the most iconic “Case Study Houses” that are open to the public. A favorite place to take visitors is the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz. We would catch a lecture on occult esoterica, or some magick-avant-garde-cinema, or get our Tarot read in the amazing bookstore and research library! I’d end it all with a dinner at Musso and Franks!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The School Of The Art Institute of Chicago where I received my Masters of Fine Art.
My mentors: Don Baum, Ray Yoshida, Jim Nutt, Karl Wirsum, Susanne Doremus, Judith Giechman, Arturo Herrera, Barbara Rossi, and Michelle Grabner, and most of all Gregory Amenoff!
Cal State University Long Beach, where I received my Bachelors Of Fine Art
My mentors: Tom Krumpak, Marie Thibeault, Cynthia Osbourne, Beverly Naidus, John Linclon, and Michael Miller, Scott Bell, and Anna Christensen.

Website: https://adamscottstudio.com

Instagram: @adam_f_scott_studio