12 Questions with Scott W. Prior

Helena Fox Fine Art welcomes artist Scott W. Prior for a two man show opening on March 2, 2018. His work will be featured alongside East Coast artist Julyan Davis. We chose these two artist for many reasons, one being their use of color and light to depict mood. Often highlighting the mundane, forgotten, or just everyday in their work, their subjects are similar, but their styles differ tremendously.   What we wanted to know was is this an East Coast/West Coast thing, or is it deeper than that. In preparation for the show, we thought we’d get to know the artists a little better.

Meet Scott W. Prior.

Scott W. Prior, self proclaimed ‘painter of stuff,’ is a native of Southern California who studied illustration and painting at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. There he studied under Craig Nelson, Bill Maughan, and Hui Han Lui. Scott is a Signature Artist member with the California Art Club and an artist member with the Portrait Society of America. He has participate in the Pasadena Museum of California Art Gold Medal Exhibition for several years and was awarded Best of Show at the 2013 Laguna Beach Plein Aire Invitational. Mr. Prior has shown with Helena Fox Fine Art for the past five years and this is his first two man show with us.

12 Questions with Scott W. Prior

1. When did you begin painting? well I’ve been drawing and painting my whole life, but got serious about it around 1990

2. Why ‘Painter of Suff’? it was more of a joke that stuck, I was making fun of the painter of light

3. How do you choose your subjects? good question…now a days I think they choose me, in order to paint something I need to be turned on by it. whether it be the location, person or object I need to really be into it

4. If you could invite three artist –living or dead—to dinner, who would you invite? Sorolla, Sargent and Zorn

5. What do you do when you aren’t painting? Family stuff, walk the dogs, surf, go to the gym, hug trees and drink beer

6. What’s your favorite genre of music to listen to while painting? lately I’ve been listening to more punk rock and folk…

7. If you could go anywhere in the world to paint, where would you go? Al Khazneh Petra, Jordan

8. How do you approach portrait painting? Is it painting of a single figure or the person and their environment? Mostly about the single person, I love catching their character. lately I’ve been into painting people that inspire me, so I started a series of them..

9. How do you describe your art to others? ha yeah, I like to tell people that I’m the guy who likes to paint the ugly shit in life that no one wants to paint. you know painter of stuff…the mundane things that people just walk by alleyways old beat up cars….oh and old punk rockers 😉

10. You’ve painted a lot of volkswagons—do you have a particular love of the bug and the bus, or is it more a product of your environment? I love those cars, growing up we had a VW bug and it seemed like almost everybody we knew back then had a bug or bus. I eventually bought a 1965 westfalia van and used it as my surf-mobile….wish I still had that it was fun!

11. What are the three most used pigments on your palette? probably burnt umber, ultramarine blue and rose madder dark

12. What did you want to be when you were a kid? HA! an artist, as a kid I loved commercial illustrators, comic book artists, and animators. my dad of course frowned upon this idea, so I tried to please him and tried other majors….6 majors later I was where I belonged….art school!

Join Helena Fox Fine Art in welcoming Scott W. Prior to the gallery for an artists reception on March 2, 2018 from 5-8pm. Preview of show goes up on February 26, 2018.