Behind door number 2?

"A Delicate Balance" 

by Scott Powers 

Copyright 2013 Scott Powers

While I was in Idaho last month at Scott Christensen's Workshop, as we came back from painting cottonwood trees, we stopped in this little tiny town to visit another artist's studio.  As we approached the door of this old worn building, Scott said something about "Scotty's Studio".  The  old wooden and stone weathered building was taller in front and sloped down to one story.  There was only small narrow horizontal windows in the front at street level- just the kind you expected to see lots of cobwebs in.  It would be perfect as a building that no one had lived in for a very long time.

The door was opened by "Scotty" and once I saw the art work I knew I was meeting another Rock Star of the art work- Scott Powers.  As 17 of us descended on his studio he was very welcoming.   He was working on "A Delicate Balance" while we were there.  He told us that he had recently decided to rework it.  After some cajoling he showed an iphone picture of it before he started to rework it.  With the exception of Scott Christensen probably, I think every other artist in the room would  have been jumping up and down with joy if they had painted something like that.  However when we looked at it versus the reworked version, you could see just how much better the reworked version was.  Part of being a rock star is not settling for good or wonderful but realizing there is a great and working toward it. 

Coming from Scott Christensen's very neat, spare and well lit studio to Scott Power's cluttered with interesting things everywhere and dark studio with just the painting area well lit was a contrast in the different environments artists' chose to work in.  I'm always fascinated to see pictures of famous artists' studios and palettes.  They both had full bookshelves or piles of books on the floor.  I could have spend days (weeks) just looking through them.

View of Scott's palette.  

We asked him about the big piles of old paint on his palettee- he said they were memories.  He could look at the pile and remember that color on that part of a particular painting.  Just how cool is that!

This is the link to Scott's website.  Hopefully it will inspire you to stretch even further to great!
Scott Power's website

And to all the artists who open their studios and let other people ask questions- Thanks for sharing a little of your art, process, and space!