"Ellison's work found an easy place in our collection, as apt beside a Max Beckmann oil portrait as a Haitian voodoo banner. There is an intense bonhomie in the weirdness of his imagery that fires the imagination of a wide range of viewers.” Evan Hughes
Exhibited at Olsen (some works available for viewing in stockroom by appointment)
“I finally met Scott Daniel Ellison in person last February on an upbeat evening in New York. It was a pretty dusk in an unseasonably warm Union Square. The assorted crazies and revellers had descended early. “I used to hang out here a lot”. So did I. We sized each other up over the obligatory gallon or so of coffee in the Starbucks upstairs at the Barnes and Noble where we had arranged to catch up. Scott had come down from Beacon, upstate for the day to run some errands and deliver some paintings he had wrapped up in a bag. They came back with me. I have known his work for some years. My father, Ray Hughes had come across it when Scott was showing with New York dealer Brian Clamp and we bought a number of small works over the years. They found an easy place in our collection, as apt beside a Max Beckmann oil portrait as a Haitian voodoo banner. There is an intense bonhomie in the weirdness of his imagery that fires the imagination of a wide range of viewers.”
Evan Hughes 2024
INTERVIEW WITH THE ARTIST
EH. Your works are imbued with a great deal of personality, tell me where do your creatures come from and how much of the self is expressed?
SDE. I think a lot of the imagery I create comes from what I think of as a magical place, in that the figures I create sort of come out of the ether and are never planned. They come into being once I start to see an impression as I’m painting. The figures seem to reflect a lot of my own anxieties, joys and fears, dreams, so in that way they can almost be seen as self portraits.
EH. Tell me a little about where making paintings jumped into your head as a possible way to spend a life?
SDE. Since childhood I was obsessed with imagery, first though horror and sci-fi and nature illustration. I made collages with Fangoria and Famous Monsters magazines and drew and painted a lot as well. I never really stopped and at 51 I really haven’t changed that much in regards to art making. It’s just something I do because I’m compelled to.
EH. I want to touch a little on what I call the Outside/In dichotomy, looking to find common ground between self-taught visionaries and introspective and raw trained artists. Is it a fence you straddle? Where do you fall?
SDE. I work from inside my head -I’d been painting a long time before I decided to get an MFA while in my late 30s. I had an earlier degree in liberal arts that I sort of pieced together while taking classes at various colleges and working odd jobs. So I came into my art studies with a style I had already developed over a decade or more. I felt like an outsider in that I had never had any formal art training but at the same time I was in an MFA program and had been working in the art world for some time as a gallery attendant and assistant to Sol LeWitt. I feel like I’m back where I belong - creating work in my own world without any distraction.
EH. Its not easy making a living from art, tell me about it. Tell me a bit about what day to day has been for you and whether your work experiences visit the imagery of your art practice.
SDE. Its a life that is sort of bestowed upon you. It’s not really by choice - I have to do it. I work side jobs to make ends meet but I feel lucky that people have responded to what I do and it more or less keeps me afloat. I’m currently working as a gardener so I’m out in the sun all day with insects weeds and birds and I definitely see them creeping into my paintings.
EH. There is a darkness that jumps out at me and makes me feel personally, quite seen and normal. I don’t find many works that speak to me from the wall as my dad used to say, paintings you have a conversation with. Is the darkness a conscious reflection?
SDE. I grew up with a lot of fear put in me and paradoxically a lot of wonder and joy. I think a lot of my fears and fascination with the human condition-and my own nightmares come out in the work without me realising it until I see what begins to appear.
EH. Are you a New York artist? An American artist? There is a pretty vast universality and personal style in your work.
SDE. I was born in the Bronx and have early memories of my great-grandparents speaking Italian and my family talking about ghosts of past relatives or telling supernatural stories involving malevolent spirits. This is on my mother’s side. My father’s side came from Norway. My family then moved to Warwick, NY a small rural town in the Hudson Valley where I spent a lot of my time in the woods or in cornfields. After high school I wound up in Sweden for a while where I worked odd jobs and made art. Spent time in Spain. North Carolina. Elsewhere. When I think about where my work comes - as far as place is concerned- from rural United States. My formative years were spent there in that Northeastern landscape of rolling hills, cornfields, creeks, cow pastures, meadows and forests.
EH. When we had our Barnes and Noble meeting in Union Square we talked as much about politics as contemporary art. As you know, my opinion is I’m still trying to work out which scene is more brutal and less lacking in substance.
SDE. There’s no obvious link, but I put it to you its hard not to make a world of goblins, monsters and witches when you turn on the television to a dumpster fire everyday? I paint at night mostly - sometimes until really late when it’s quiet and I can turn off all the noise. I listen to music and just sort of see what happens.
EH. Finally, what do you think your paintings should do?
SDE. It all goes back to childhood for me. I think as we age we lose a lot of the magic of our early years and for me painting keeps me in touch with that version of myself. It’s time travel in a way. I also feel that painting is in a sense a performance. I want to share the work with others - as a filmmaker would - in hopes that they can see themselves in it or maybe relate to it on some other level unbeknownst to me. And then there’s the actual painting - the object. I prefer a painting to be about the paint and surface as much as the subject. I want the painting to be an object imbued with its own spirit that will carry on a sort of life of its own.