Virgil Hammock

Stephen Paints a Picture at The Beaverbrook Art Gallery (link)

Fredericton, NB – Opening on 27 February 2014 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM

Until 8 June 2014

My friend, the artist Stephen Scott, likes to take his summers away from his Fredericton area studio and home to travel and paint in a different location. This year he decided on going back to his roots in Sackville, New Brunswick, where he had studied art at Mount Allison University from 1974 to 1978. I was the head of the fine arts department when he was a student here. Now he is nearly a senior citizen and certainly a senior artist. What that makes me is left to your imagination. Soon after his arrival this summer, we fell into a conversation over coffee about the act of painting. I told him about a book, Man with a Blue Scarf, I had read written by British art critic Martin Gayford, of sitting for a portrait by Lucian Freud, and how interesting it was to follow their conversation over the very long time it took Freud to complete the painting. One thing led to another and we decided to repeat the idea with me as the subject. Stephen is a very good portrait painter and likes to paint from life. It is a very different process from painting from photographs and Stephen, like Freud, is a very slow and meticulous artist.