RICHARD SCOTT
In his 70th year

RICHARD SCOTT lives and works in Walberswick. This deeply atmospheric place has provided the inspiration for much of his work, as it did for his father Eric Scott, who worked there throughout the 1950s and has been a profound influence. Another revelation came in 1943, when a reproduction on his school classroom wall of Pieter de Hooch’s The Courtyard of a House in Delft awakened in him a lasting passion for seventeenth century Dutch painting.

When taken to see his father’s work in the RA Summer Exhibition in 1948, he came across his next major hero, S J ‘Lamorna’ Birch. This led to the discovery of other painters who had worked in Cornwall, such as Stanhope Forbes and Frank Bramley, but these enthusiasms had to be suppressed at art school. In the 1950s French nineteenth century painting was explored in a fever of enthusiasm, but to admit interest in anything with a Victorian flavour was to invite censure. Later re-examination of these early passions seemed like a delayed and abundant harvest. More recent sources of influence have included L S Lowry’s early tutor, Adolphe Valette, and an early twentieth century Royal Academician, Algernon Newton. Both conveyed a sense of things felt but unseen in their portrayal of industrial landscape; Richard Scott was much pleased, recently, to hear his own work described with these words. He was persuaded to specialise in sculpture for his NDD and enjoyed a richly rewarding time at Camberwell under the charismatic tutelage of Karel Vogel. Then, after National Service made memorable by a Caribbean posting, he returned to Camberwell for further study, some part-time teaching and a return to painting. For two years he shared a central London studio with Camberwell contemporary John Ravera, an association which resulted in two shared exhibitions in Suffolk and a pioneer ‘open studio’ experiment at the Kingly Street base.

Moving to Suffolk in 1965 Richard Scott continued painting, and in 1971 began a period of part-time teaching until his appointment in 1982 as a full-time lecturer at the School of Art and Design at Suffolk College, Ipswich. He held this post until early retirement in 1995. Throughout his Suffolk years he has exhibited widely in East Anglia and London, and was a founder member of The Suffolk Group in 1990. Since the mid-1980s he has researched in depth the history of Walberswick as a Mecca for artists and has written about it extensively, as well as acting as a consultant for several exhibitions. In 1995 he was the invited speaker on this subject for the annual New English Lecture at the Mall Galleries, London.

RICHARD SCOTT