Immortal Artist: Showcase Artist

Artist: Paul Scott Malone
Email: paulscottmalone@gmail.com
Website: https://paulscottmalone.com
Location: Tucson, Arizona, USA
Twitter: paulscottmalone
Mediums: oil (primary), acrylic, pastel, pencil, charcoal, watercolor

Please leave Paul a note at the bottom of this page if you like his work

Painting pictures is what I do as a way of life; it's my job. Except at certain times -- periods of illness, say, or a major relocation -- I go to my studio every day. And every moment I spend in the studio is a gift, a blessing.

It's a great thrill to me to make pictures. I don't consider my work a vehicle of self-expression or a matter of godly inspiration, though I do believe one is born with the ability, just as some welders are born to weld and some stock brokers born to make money.

A little education doesn't hurt, but as with everything truly worth doing, you teach yourself. What motivates me to work terribly long hours for a pittance at a largely ignored endeavor, I'm still uncertain. As the poet Donald Hall wrote, "true ambition" is the only sensible reason to work at the artist's trade. If he was right, that means I must be striving to make something that will live on, be known and revered, long after I've passed through the Pearly Gates. A touch of immortality.

There's not much to say about each individual painting. Even the titles are so obscure as to be meaningless. They all go something like this: "STORM #2, Composition 518," and the first part always comes to me as I work or once a series seems finished. And there are so many paintings, my housekeeping so poor, that the composition numbers have long since fallen out of sync. My records are a jumble and a mess. That's partly because I don't make pictures that are about things; they're not statements on, or even re-creations of, particular places or people or events, certainly nothing one might call social commentary.

I make paintings that ARE things, rather like abstract sculpture, entire, solitary unto themselves. My work is as free of external influence or imitation as I can make it. Inward I search, not outward, and the images, the colors, usually come to me as I work. I see the complete painting when the painting is complete. Mystery dominates.

I hope my viewers are free -- as free as life allows anyone to be -- free to enjoy my work without preconceptions. I would like viewers to see the paintings for what they are, as explorations of the human mind, so deep and wide, molded into unique gifts from the limitless resources of the imagination.