Scott Ivey

Washington D.C. based artist Scott Ivey's collection of paintings in oil and charcoal is a melancholic and desolating depiction of a city in the peripheries of the sun's illumination. His works illustrate the enigmatic beauty of urban landscapes.

Scott Ivey (b. North Carolina) moved to Washington, D.C. in his twenties and fell in love with the vitality of the city. After fine art training at the Corcoran School of Art, Montgomery College in Takoma Park and the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, a distinctive art style arose. Inspired by Hopper, Turner, and Whistler, Ivey focused on painterly landscapes, where his works emerge through the process of remembering and internalizing the observed urban landscape through a personal lens.

Ivey's fascination with the contemporary urban landscape and the connections that tie him to his place in D.C. is played out through his paintings. He discovers his subjects without seeking them. They are often the serendipitous results of trips to the grocery store or any other practical routine of daily life. The artist sketches on location, executing studies in which he responds to the movement of light and his emotional relationship to that particular space. These quick outdoor studies are translated into longer meditations on his canvases in his studio. The hues of browns and umbers simulating old sepia-toned photographs produce a timeless quality to his works, especially from the perspective of a transient city that is continually evolving. 

The artist illustrates how light or the lack of light creates mystery and ambiguity in one's reading of his works and in particular, one's perception of the moment captured on the canvas. He explains of his process: "I intentionally start with a dark background, slowly introducing light into the painting; the scenes slowly reveal themselves in the emerging light." These moments can be transcendent and emotional and therefore require the viewer to process it slowly. This time allows one to immerse themselves into the painting and thus see themselves in relation to the urban space. 

"If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint." Edward Hopper.