Artwork Description
Scott Greene – After the Hunt
Dimensions: 19.5 x 16.5″ framed / 14 x 11″ unframed
Year: 2017
Medium: oil on panel
Scott Greene’s oil on panel work, After the Hunt, captures a multifaceted narrative in a single frame; the central tree with branches missing is indicative of Greene’s focus on the intersection between “romantic beauty and environmental exploitation,” and the hanging chickens are suggestive of the ‘hunt’ employed in the title. The various items in the piece allude to the site as one of nostalgia and a forgotten past, where the red hat symbolizes the changing American political atmosphere and the debris the degradation of the earth’s resources and present physicality.
Scott Greene’s work is not associated with a definitive time period, but instead, works to integrate art historical and classical elements into a more contemporary approach. Greene’s work functions as a form of socio-political commentary and “uses the composition of a historical work as a matrix for making a painting that humorously examines the relationship between politics, nature and culture”. Greene draws on themes such as beauty, popular culture, and the natural environment in an additive artistic process that emphasizes the visual and temporal effects of building rather than executing a work in a single instance. After studying in California and receiving his BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, Greene moved to New Mexico, where he received his MFA in painting and has since lived for almost 30 years. Greene’s work derives much of its influence from this matrix; where he describes that, “the expansive space, vivid light and western frame of reference informs the narrative content in my work, and the alien beauty of high desert skies serve as backdrops for many compositions”. Greene also touches on the complex interplay between beauty and environmental exploitation within his oeuvre—an issue he sees as being both pertinent to and prevalent within New Mexico, today.