William Scott, R.A. (1913-1989)

Ronald Alley discusses Scott's oil compositions of the late 1950s, 'with increasing clarification of his style and the use of a very small number of simple forms and large expanses of colour the treatment came closer to that of American painters such as Rothko. Instead of lozenges of colour there were usually irregular variants of the square and circle, sometimes dense blocks of colour and sometimes only outlines - shapes floating in surrounding areas of emptiness. Yet despite an almost geometrical division of the picture surface, these were not geometrical paintings. Their special character came from the unpredictable, exploratory edges of the forms; from the asymmetrical compositions with their suggestions of movement and tensions, their nearly unstable equilibrium; and from the handling of the paint itself, the contrasts of fat paint and thin paint, of areas of uniform paint texture with others which were blotched and scored and encrusted ... There is in certain of these works, a suggestion of a dream-like memory of ancient times and places, an echo of graffiti and the textures of caves and walls' (see R. Alley, exhibition catalogue, William Scott, Belfast, Ulster Museum, 1986, p. 22).