About

I paint intuitively, reflecting on the experiences of my early career as a geologist and my long walks in ancient landscapes.  My wish is for those viewing my work to slow down and connect with geological time and the fragility of our planet. 

My work explores the passage of time: the stability of the ancient beneath layers of impermanence and elemental change.  Recent work explores extremes of both dark and light palettes and hues in between, layers and raw textures aiming to create depth.  Much of my work is drawn from the landscape of the Cornish coast, my adopted home, but is also influenced by my travels in other environments.

Originally from Lancashire, my roots are Irish. When not in the studio, I am at my happiest in the company of family, friends and fellow artists, or just with my own thoughts, in the  wild expanse of hill, mountain, moorland and coast.    

Art writer Kate Reeve-Edwards of Cultural Capital Arts says:

'Mary Scott’s experience of the landscape begins with its geology.; the connection to the physicality of earth, the qualities of rock, the layers of strata have been transposed into the way she deals with paint. Scott’s paintings are historical, layered things. Initially created through a burst of emotional release and unguarded response to the land, layers of deep colour are built. Her surfaces are textural, the slashes and cracks mirroring the fissures in rock faces, the outlines of boulders and headland. These marks are also expressions of hurt, symbolic of our destruction of the planet'.

I use pigments and rock powders to embed a sense of  age into my work, and tools, rags, found objects and my hands create texture through scratching, scraping and gouging. As a series of work develops, I look for 'conversations’ in what is hidden or revealed, and in areas of loudness and quietness.  The finished painting will often feel rough and unpolished, reflecting the imperfections of life and the state of the Earth.