Norman Scott: Landscapes

Norman William John Scott (1913-1978).

Norman Scott developed an interest in art while at school in Gisborne. He enlisted for military service in 1939 and flew with Bomber Command until his aircraft was shot down by a German nightfighter in 1941. He baled out and landed near the Dutch village of Terwispel. After being captured by German soldiers he was imprisoned in Camp 357 Stalag Kopernikus and was a prisoner in various camps over the next four years. After the war he returned to London where he studied at the Slade School of Art. He then returned to Gisborne where he worked as an artist until his death in 1978.

It was unusual in the 1940s for a man of limited means to decide to become a full-time artist. At that time there were no institutional or governmental programmes available to provide support for artists through grants and fellowships such as exist today. Norman Scott lived a simple life, living and working in one room of his Stout Street accommodation, and growing much of his own food. Members of the community with an interest in the arts provided some support through the purchase of his art works, although paintings sold for very small sums in small provincial centres during the 1950s and '60s. Scott combined his passion for art and fishing during regular biking expeditions, sometimes with other artists, throughout the East Coast and many parts of New Zealand.

Norman Scott is perhaps best remembered for his oil paintings although he was also an accomplished watercolour painter and sculptor. The paintings in this exhibition, drawn from the museum’s fine arts collection, date to the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was focusing primarily on painting and the mature exploration of a number of styles. While this exhibition includes only abstract landscapes, the museum collection also includes a superb representational painting of Hikurangi above the Waiapu Valley that clearly demonstrates his command of this more traditional style.

When, in the 1960s, Scott turned from watercolours to oil painting, ‘his paintings began to show a new forcefulness and vigour, sometimes appearing abstract but never far from the spatial relationships observed in everyday life.’ ‘For Norman Scott abstract painting involved the stripping away of the non-essential elements of any represented object exposing the dramatic impact of what the artist feels and sees.’ These comments, which appeared in an unattributed newspaper article, admirably encapsulate the nature of his work.

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