A Portable WINDOW

Scott Prior's Seasons

- MICHAEL PEARCE

Scott Prior has painted a pleasant baby blue cottage overlooking a delicate and pastel dawn skyline rising gently over the New England coastline, gazing over the hedge of an unkempt garden at the cookie-shingled house. Somehow, with the skill and sensitive eye of a master, he has found the virtuoso balance of the contrast between the chromatic cadmium orange glow in the bedroom window and the gloaming tonalism of the rising light.

Despite the shadows and desaturation of early morning, somehow Prior finds cheerful color, and the vibrant and sensual plot has a vigor and spirit of peace and place. He manages to shape a mood that feels as though someone really cared for these plants, and carefully tended this flowering little piece of homely pleasure but let it run to seed as time slowed down. There is a lovely, unconventional oddness about it and many of his compositions—an innocent sort of alienation, as if everyone on earth was suddenly whisked away and nobody remembered to turn o  the lights. This is Prior’s Blue House, Early Morning.