Early Life and Artistic Training
Ian Scott enters the world in Bradford, England, on 20 April 1945. The landscape of his childhood shifts in 1952 when he moves to New Zealand. By the age of 15, the act of painting has already taken hold. It is a formative period of discovery that leads him to Kelston Boys' High School. He does not linger in the classroom for long; the impulse to create drives him toward formal study.
The mid-1960s mark a period of rapid professional ascent. Scott enrolls at the Elam School of Fine Arts, where he studies from 1964 to 1967. The momentum is immediate. In 1963, he holds his first exhibition. By 1965, he is already being recognized by his peers, winning the junior section of the Kelliher Prize. This early success establishes a trajectory that moves quickly from student exercises to a distinct presence in the local art scene.
Technique and Artistic Style
The late 1960s find Scott leaning into a Pop Art sensibility, pulling from American pop-culture imagery to challenge the regional realist traditions of New Zealand. His 'Girlie' paintings from this era function as a complex dialogue with his predecessors. He weaves references to other artists into the canvas, using the figures of women to respond to the landscape traditions established by those before him. This period is defined by a tension between local landscape and the glossy, lolly-coloured aesthetics of international Pop Art.
As his practice evolves, the focus shifts toward the formal properties of the medium itself. He adopts a serial method, a process where each painting emerges from the necessity of the one preceding it. This leads to the development of his Lattice works. In these pieces, oil on canvas becomes a site for undulating ribbons of colour. He employs a technique of over- and under-lapping these ribbons, creating a sense of movement that ripples across the surface. By the 1990s, this investigation into form matures into a series of "paintings about painting," where flat blocks of colour are layered over traditional landscape structures.
Key Works and Collections
The late 1960s mark a shift toward the "girl" paintings, where landscape meets a pop-culture sensibility. In 1969, Leapaway girl emerges as a central piece of this era. This oil on canvas work, currently held in the Te Papa, Wellington collection, features a leaping frock and bold colors that suggest a colorfield painting gone airborne. It sits alongside Jump over girl, a work held by Victoria University. These pieces often blend the local landscape with imagery lifted from fashion and advertising magazines.
The momentum continues into the next decade. Sky Dash, an artwork from about 1970, resides in the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki collection. This period of production highlights a transition from early landscape focus toward more complex, layered compositions. Later, the focus shifts again with the Model series. In these works, a solitary female nude poses within a bland domestic interior, often accompanied by paintings by well-known modernist and Pop artists.
