Artist Statement
Artists make art to destroy and create new worlds.
Good art should transform you.
I make art to make sense of myself and my world.
When I am making art I leave this world and fly.
Art should inspire you.
Art has its own life.
Art should be powerful.
Without art you do not have a culture.
Art is a life connector.
There are very few artists in the world, most people who call themselves artists, are really designers.
They make nice designs.
They do not have a Vision.
To be an artist you must be willing to take risks.
I want my art to be as interesting as watching the reflections on water, or the clouds in the sky.
I want orgasms of color shape and line.
I want people to be moved when they see my art.
I want the same feelings to arise when you see my art, as you would get from a beautiful lover.
I begin with a known entity, and then I try to create new rhythms, and patterns
I want to create a new myth
I begin a dialogue with the material I am working with, and the material begins to speak to me.
Art has its own language
I want to create art that that will help heal the hate in this world.
Artists are the shamans of a culture
My work is influenced by
Chitra Neogy, the ” long body”
Artists are the shamans of a culture.
I want to create a new myth.
"I want to create art that will help heal the hate in this world."
Scott Endsley
Comments on Scott Endsley’s Exhibit: “Glass Chants and Breath”
Light through colored glass has been a source of beauty, delight, fascination (even reverence) since the Phoenetians. Colored, decorated and painted glass has been collected and coveted since the Pharoahs. We have genuflected in front of its mysterious beauty - think of numinous, luminosity, numen lumens, as well as sanctus - and in very recent years we are able again to enjoy it as a living art form, muchly written about.*
I suspect that the early impetus for this renewed interest in glass is due to Harvey Littleton and his Glass Lab at the University of Wisconsin in the early 60s. I also suspect that the resurgence (since the mid 1980s) in the making of monoprints or monotypes on various forms of plastic or plexiglas, with the delicious and satisfying ease of manipulating media, most often printer's ink or oil paint on a super slick surface easily wiped and adjusted, made the leap to painting on glass almost intuitive. Consider. The visceral pleasure of an artist freely painting a monotype. The excitement of a single print with the possibility of a second, working from reprinting the ghost created by the remaining paint on the plate. The pleasure of the viewer in sensing the artist's freedom of work. Then consider this on glass with its own numinous ghost, created by light, by variations of light. Almost as tempting to collect as mediaeval glass, but much easier. FIAT LUX!
William Bunce, Professor Emeritus, UW Madison
Throughout his career, the pursuit of “colors that burn from within” has been a considerable force for Scott Endsley. Given this pursuit, Endsley’s recent transition from canvas to glass represents a logical development and metamorphosis. Endsley’s works on glass are Elemental – colors that achieve his objective of Fire and light, coexisting with the elements of Earth and Water in the fluid paint - all suspended and harmonized within the element of Air. (At least two of Endsley’s earliest works on glass, “Birth” and “Wedding Night”, are premier examples of this “Elemental Balance”.)
Adhering to the Jungian tradition of following one’s Path, Endsley’s pursuit of the Sacred is inseparable from his pursuit of luminosity. In addition to Endsley’s abstract work that is reminiscent of Motherwell and Rothko, evoking a feeling of sublime reverance, Endsley also employs figurative references to the Sacred, including the lotus, the female figure and Ganesh. The lotus (found in “Lotus Song” and “She”) is a symbol of purity - the sacred flower whose beauty emerges from mud and is also the symbol of the pure serene consciousness of the Divine. Endsley’s protrayal of the Sacred within the female energy, the Shakti, can be found in such works as “TriCycle”. In “The Sacred” Ganesh (the god of beginnings, the remover of obstacles and the lord of abundance) is found within a circle of Fire in Water, reminding us that abundance is found by moving through obstacles.
TL Gorman, Director – King’s Foot Gallery
*Balchin, Judy. CLASSIC GLASS PAINTING. 1999.
*Chouglay, Naazish. GLASS PAINTING. 1999.
*Dunsterville, Jane. THE GLASS PAINTING BOOK. 1997.
*Elskus, Albinas. THE ART OF PAINTING ON GLASS. 2000.
*Gear, Alan. GLASS PAINTING. 2000
Art
Taking panes to create art
About a year ago, painter Scott Endsley discovered a new art form: oil paint on glass.
"It's painting with light," explains the soft-spoken Endsley. "It's very freeing and explosive."
When he wanted to mount his first solo show of the new work, Madison came to mind. That's because Endsley got his MFA from UW-Madison and credits art professor George Cramer with literally saving his life and career.So Endsley, who now lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y., has a show of some two dozen pieces that will run through Dec. 29 at the Kings Foot Gallery, 2725 Atwood Ave. (Hours are TuesdaySaturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Call 246-2032 for information.)
To enter the gallery is to enter a magical space where swirls of vibrant, transparent color create some kind of secular version of the awe-inspiring stained glass windows you see in the great cathedrals of Europe.That's not by chance. Endsley recalls how he and his partner were traveling in France - he specifically cites visits to the Chartres cathedral and Notre Dame in Paris - and had the sudden realization that oil paintings didn't have to be opaque and done on canvas, wood or paper.
It was, he admits, a life-altering, careerchanging insight.
Now he imports the special oil paint from France and uses sheets of tempered l/4-inch thick glass as his "canvas." The paint itself is tral}sparent and requires no special work to be done to the glass to adhere. And the glass is a lot less fragile than it looks. Endsley says he has never broken a piece while working on it.
Some of Endsley's work is more abstract and looks like Robert Motherwell or Mark Rothko. Other paintings - especially the ones where Endsley scrapes outlines into the dried paint - are more representational or figurative and remind one of the folklore-filled art of Marc Chagall.
Still others are so swirly, they look like images of faraway galaxies from the Hubble Space Telescope or the kind of psyche
delic light shows that, during the 1960s, used to be projected at the Fillmore West
VISUAL ART
Jacob Stockinger
Scott Endsley's 011 paint on glass works are on display at King's Foot Gallery.
while the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane played and the audience tripped.
Whatever comparisons you make, the art is certainly eye-catching and unique.
Installing the show was not easy, says gallery manager Terry Gorman. Except for a few relatively small, table-top pieces, the large glass plates hang by transparent monofilm fishing line that is attached to Lbrackets near the ceiling. That way they hang away from the wall, so that light can pass through them and project colored shadows against the gallery's white walls.
Other pieces are simply set into the window frame. Endsley says he especially likes that kind of display because it allows the difference in natural light to create subtle differences in how his work appears.
One particularly timely piece is dated
Sept. 11, 2001.
"I saw it happen," says Endsley. "I live' right across from the trade towers, a mile
away. First I felt the concussion in our loft, then I went out on the roof and watched the smoke. Then I went down to the river with 20 or so other people and all of a sudden
. the first tower dropped and then the second one dropped. Then I went into my studio and created this."
The work is an abstract with the kinds of intense reds and yellows that give you some idea of the hell-like, jet-fuel inferno that engulfed the towers and their thousands of
On Display the Works of
Scott Endsley
