LOY

It could be said that the month of January has been kind to Darrell Loy Scott.

In January of 1999, this artist moved to Arkansas and began painting full-time. He had already moved from landscape painting to a primitive, figurative style and was still showing his art at a gallery in New Orleans. It was time for him to show with a local dealer.

Leslie Newell Peacock of The Arkansas Times reviewed his artwork at a Hot Springs gallery. "Scott paints primitives, flat, colorful, quasi-pointalist pieces featuring rural African Americans. They're so dead on, so pure, that most people are surprised to find that Scott is an Anglo, a ruddy one at that, rather than a black man." Peacock continued, "Scott is a master colorist, speckling the canvas with vivid blues and reds, knocking yellow against turquoise, and placing against this hothouse background figures so angular and black they are like cutouts. It's work that fans of [Arkansas] native son Carroll Cloar will love, dots of color in a Southern landscape".

As Scott is quick to say, Peacock's remarks - and particularly her reference to Cloar's paintings - "started it all" for him. So, after painting for more than 40 years - interrupted only by his years of military service during the Vietnam conflict - this artist had become the proverbial "overnight sensation". Art collectors did take notice, traveling to galleries in Hot Springs, Little Rock, and Memphis to view and purchase his works. One avid collector eventually became board president of the Arkansas Arts Center.

Another astute collector brought Scott's work to the attention of the Historic Arkansas Museum. His solo exhibit there in January of 2005 was well-received and attended, despite the torrential rain flooding the streets of Little Rock on opening night. His artwork was the cover story of the Conway newspaper's GO&DO, and all 18 available paintings were sold. In January of 2008, one of his paintings was featured in a group show in Memphis; that work was sold. At the same time, he participated in "Beyond Boundaries: Self-Taught Artists", a group show at the Schumacher Gallery of Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. Art critic Christopher A. Yates of The Columbus Dispatch explained that, in the late 1940's, the infamous French artist Jean Dubuffet described the concept of "self-taught"as artwork "produced by persons unscathed by artistic culture, where mimicry plays no part".

That Ohio museum exhibit included works of "15 important practitioners of the genre", artists of national repute such as William Hawkins, Michael Banks, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Woodie Long, Dr. Bob, and Tiffany Ownbey. Yates observed in Scott's 6 entries on display that he "produces pieces with a complex tapestry of shape and color. Every composition is balanced and suggests spatial depth." This depiction of depth was achieved by combining opaque brushwork and transparent glazes with a technique the artist developed when "all the bristles fell out so I just used the other end". This time-consuming stick method furrows short strokes of saturated color one next to another while revealing the colors beneath.

Scott's flat and faceless black figures go beyond that of Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden. His everyday scenarios are products of his keen observation of life which serve as a reminder of what makes us human. Whether we are looking for Mattie or finding Mrs. Willis in Scott's paintings, we are charmed by the most minute detail, delivered oftentimes with humor and almost always with compassion. We embrace the timeless familiarity of his many subjects as they bring us comfort in the peaceful co-existence of Man, Nature and Fate.

The artist may be directly contacted through the following email address: dloys46@aol.com. For additional information and images of his work, see his other webpage at AKAS II.