Favoring FIRE
American Art Collector|Natural Beauty
Using the elements as his guide, Michael Scott examines the changing landscape in two exhibitions.
MICHAEL CLAWSON
Favoring FIRE

A pinecone from the jack pine is a curious specimen. It can remain dormant on the tree’s branches for decades. There it waits for cataclysm to strike in the form of a forest fire. The resin-coated cones can withstand intense heat, which only melts the outer layer of the pinecone and releases the stubborn seeds from within. Later, they tumble to the ground and life begins anew.

For New Mexico painter Michael Scott, there is beauty in this relationship between fire and nature, one that he is exploring at great depth within an ongoing series of work titled Preternatural, a name that he borrows from 13"-century philosopher Thomas Aquinas—“Suspended between the mundane and the miraculous, it is that which appears outside or beside the natural,” Aquinas wrote.

This story is from the Natural Beauty edition of American Art Collector.

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This story is from the Natural Beauty edition of American Art Collector.

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