Bill Scott’s paintings have an atmosphere of ease, but consideration and reconsideration of beautiful form churn within them. Two or Three Nudes in a Landscape (2010) summarizes Scott’s endeavor, its delightful title alluding to an image that somehow is richly descriptive while in fact depicting nothing. Maybe a white-over-blue passage turns into a patch of sky, and the lollipop shapes become trees, but that’s as specific as it gets. The rest of the painting consists of colors that you would use to paint figures in a landscape if you adored Matisse. Scott has arranged them as an abstraction in medium- and high-key swatches. Upon this he has painted confident linear curves in a variety of darker hues. In another kind of painting those lines might denote a knee or a breast. Here they support the picture as structural notations that Scott has derived from a lifetime of immersion in painting.

Read the whole essay at Art in America.

Bill Scott’s solo exhibition ran September 8-October 8, 2011 at Hollis Taggart Galleries, 958 Madison Avenue, 212-628-4000, hollistaggart.com.

Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer. He blogs at Artblog.net.