Page 39 - Studio International - November 1966

sorties into the West End—Scottie lives in Kilburn—to And to be fair, let it be recorded that his contempt for
buy caps, riding boots, and other clothing, are deli- the intellectual—those 'mouthpieces' as he wickedly calls
ciously incongruous practices, beautifully descriptive of a them—is just as searing as his dislike of the priests and the
remarkable man; an eccentric and a visionary whose politicians. Scottie Wilson is a visionary and a mystic;
contempt for the pillars of society is balanced by a qualities rare among primitive painters. He does not
devout belief in the omni-prescience of 'god' (no parti- draw upon the forms of the phenomenal world for the
Dream House 1946 cular brand of god, if you please : none of that Judeo- shape and substance of his art. The motifs he uses—faces,
Pen and coloured crayon
15 x 20 in. Christian rubbish) and the wonder and beauty of creation. flowers, birds, fish, fountains, totemic forms (derivative
from the totem poles he saw in the parks of Vancouver
during his years in Canada) —are related, not to their
counterparts in the physical world, but to the ideas,
dreams, fantasies, which are the support and heart-beat
of his work. He is also a painter of the intuition; of the
heart, and of the memory. He knows what juxtaposition
of figures will best reveal the essence of his message. And
he has a message. His heart tells him what he must say,
and his memory provides the appropriate scheme of
imagery. So far as looking at things goes he might as well
be blind. Much of his basic imagery derives from child-
hood and, in a sense he is an artist in recherche du temps
perdu. However, his own madeleine, the brown-stone
fountain in a Glasgow park, swimming with fish, and
alive with the flutter of birds, is in no sense a literal
recall of time past, but an element of time past trans-
formed and recast by the imagination to symbolize the
essence of the artist's philosophy; his belief in the trans-
figuring omnipotence of beauty, peace, stillness. Life he
sees as a battle between beauty and ugliness, light and
dark, good and evil. The fountain of his childhood is
the source of all that is good and beautiful. This key
image is used frequently, and the variability of its ap-
pearance perfectly illustrates the difference between
Self Portrait 1940
Pen and coloured crayon
8 x 11 1/4 in.