Perfumed nudes and the shock of the new

Australian painter and horse trainer Alastair Gordon Scott's appreciation for Israelis' love of life comes from the fact that he's already been dead.

By CARL HOFFMAN
Alastair Gordon Scott artist (photo credit: Courtesy)
Alastair Gordon Scott artist
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Alastair Gordon Scott, 53, gazes happily around the crowded, noisy Tel Aviv café near the gallery where his paintings are being exhibited and says, "I'm not Jewish, but I'm told by Israelis that I should have been." His Australian accent, delivered with a resonant baritone, provides an interesting counterpoint to the din of mostly young female voices conversing loudly in Hebrew all around us. Scott, whose full surname is Gordon Scott, is the last of a line formed by two feuding Scottish clans who ultimately decided to make love, not war, and merge. Born in Adelaide, he grew up on an Outback horse ranch on the Eyre Peninsula on Australia's southern coast. But it wasn't your every day Outback ranch. "It was in the second-hottest-and-driest part of Australia, but strangely enough it was on the ocean. So most of the time I didn't know whether I was a cowboy or a beach bum. Also, the lifestyle was something like the film Out of Africa, like life in colonial Kenya around a hundred years ago. Highly educated people, captains of industry, artists, scientists - my father was a jet turbine wunderkind." Scott's grandfather, Dr. Malcolm Gordon Scott, was a pioneer in keyhole surgery; his maternal grandparents owned the Adelaide zoo. "A dinner at our home often consisted of scientists and engineers bumping elbows with artists and ballet directors." Scott credits his early childhood at the desert horse station, and its sweeping Outback panoramas, with not only providing a major influence on his art, but also as the origin of his second career: from his home base in Munich, where he now lives with his German wife Claudia, Scott also travels around Europe designing courses for three-day equestrian events - show jumping, dressage and cross country - as well as training horses and riders. Still, Scott considers art his "day job," accounting for 70 percent of his time. Refocusing on the early years of his life, Scott relates, "We moved to Melbourne when I was 10, which was quite an upset for this kid from the bush. I didn't quite get it. I still don't really understand men very well. I understand horses and women, but I really don't understand men. And the conventions of city life were something that took a while to work out." The ensuing years found Scott in two successive elite boarding schools - one very liberal, the other famously conservative. He became head military cadet at the second school, winning a special award for leadership. Three months before final examinations, however, fate wielded Scott a rough blow. "I died in a motorcycle accident," he states simply. After what seems like a very, very long moment of silence, Scott adds, "Yeah, I was dead. They got me back in the ambulance, but I bled to death. I remember lying there on the street, with the ambulance guy saying, 'I can't stop the blood. He's bleeding from too many places.' And I remember saying to them, 'Don't worry, guys. I ain't dying on a wet street in a city at night.' They put me into the ambulance, and as it sped away to the hospital I sort of drifted off. I woke up a few minutes later and heard the ambulance guy shout to the driver, 'My God! I've got him back! He's back!'" Scott feels that as a result of this experience he is able to enjoy life and appreciate every moment of it more clearly and intensely. "That's why I like Israel so much. With so much tragedy and so much danger looming all around the place, people here live their lives and know how good life is." In Melbourne, Scott continued to grow up with art. His mother opened and ran a gallery, and both of his parents commissioned works from artists. "So there was always art around when I was growing up, and we knew lots of artists," he recalls. His first tutoring in art was at school, under Ki Nimori-sensei, a Japanese master whom Scott remembers with unabashed reverence. "He was a master of both the sword and of art," he says. "He trained me as an artist as one would train a warrior novice. He sat me in front of stacks of paper and got me started speed-drawing nudes, training my hand and eyes to react with what he called 'muscle memory.' He'd give other students 20 minutes, but for me Nimori-sensei would snap his fingers, and I'd have to toss away the sheet I was painting and start anew. The master asked the model to change poses every five seconds. Eventually, I was able to capture a model within three seconds." Scott sees this almost Zen-like training as the pivotal feature of his development as an artist. He says, "Nimor-sensei taught me discipline and control, and to this day I believe that it is discipline that gives you freedom. Sometimes I see kids spray painting graffiti on someone's wall. Some people celebrate this as freestyle art, as a form of free expression, but I say they're missing the point. A racehorse has to be trained how to gallop and then how to run. If you try to make the horse run without this training, its legs are everywhere. The freedom to run comes after discipline. I think it's the same with art, although I suppose many in my profession would disagree." Scott has additional reason to endorse the effects of rigorous hand-eye training in art, as well as the value of self-discipline in general. He maintains that he is not only dyslexic, but displays what he calls "presentations of autism." As examples of these, Scott notes, "Whenever I go out to a place like this, I will never, ever, sit with my back to the door. I am also always armed - armed with non-firearm weapons, but armed, nonetheless." And yet, like many artists whose personalities might be described as odd or eccentric, Scott is the very model of no-nonsense professionalism while discussing his work - an exhibition of paintings entitled "Perfumed Nudes," recently displayed at the Ephrat Gallery on Gordon Street in Tel Aviv. The paintings, large and brightly lit, virtually stop the viewer in his tracks as he enters the room. All are big, brilliantly colorful expressionistic renderings of the female form in a variety of poses - some quite sexually suggestive, others not at all. The colors of the various nudes range from bright shocking pink to electric blue; others are brown, black, and shades of flesh tones with yellow highlights. Varying degrees of light and shading are used to enhance the exposure of ribs, the swell of breasts, and the rippling muscle tones of arms, legs and backs. Scott frequently departs from realism to tweak or play with certain features, such as incongruously large nipples and exaggeratedly round buttocks. Some nudes are depicted in thoughtful repose, while others appear ready to leap off the canvas and sprint around the gallery. "I begin with a pose that excites me," Scott explains. "I don't paint lovemaking because the viewer becomes a voyeur. However, I prefer erotic or semi-erotic poses as they utilize more facets of the woman, and I am more motivated. Also, I like to tease spectators a little. Non-photo-realistic portraiture can be quite challenging, so to make it easier for people I make it harder to avoid enjoying the 'good parts.' I'm not pushing at the red line. I simply like painting beauty." Fortunately, he does not have to look very far to find it. Scott's wife Claudia is the model for most of his paintings. In addition to serving as the artist's primary muse, Claudia Jakob Scott has been her husband's major connection to Israel. Claudia spends almost every other week in Israel on business, and Scott began to accompany her here in 2000. And while "Perfumed Nudes" is his first exhibition in this country, Scott is determined that it will not be his last. "Israel is fantastic!" he says. "It's one of the most extraordinary countries on earth. If somebody doesn't like this place, there's something really wrong with them. The thing here that I admire more than anything else is that regardless of what is happening - terrorism, bombings, wars, whatever - people here go out and live their lives. Regardless of fear or pain over people they have lost, mothers bring their small children to school, grandmothers go out and shop for groceries, people go to work, and everyone realizes that they can either hide away in their houses or go out and live their lives. And they choose to go out and live their lives. The great Australian art critic Robert Hughes would very likely say that Israelis are a wholesome people who live everyday embracing the 'shock of the new.' That's what I love about Israel." Although the formal exhibition is now closed, the Ephrat Gallery will continue to display some of his paintings, and another exhibition - this time in Jerusalem - is still in the planning stages. We can evidently look forward to seeing a lot more work from Alastair Gordon Scott in the future, and many more renderings of his beautiful muse. The future path for Scott appears to stretch clearly before him. "I want to be here," he says. "I've just found a studio here, because I want to paint here. I want to sell paintings here, because I want to live here. I like it here."