“To me, a big part of the beauty of an
object
is what it’s next to.”
—Scottie
Scottie Pabin is an abstract artist who enjoys piecing evocative textured cloth layered with oil and acrylic paint. Her work focuses on imaginative reassembly of the forms on the canvas, marrying cloth and paint to fashion layered and sensual tactile works.
Scottie grew up in Mississippi and draws inspiration from the half hills/half delta area of her youth. Recalling the broody landscapes where she grew up, the wide-open fields, endless skies, swamps and slow flowing rivers, she finds subtle beauty in muted colors.
Scottie’s artistic inspirations include the cut outs introduced by Henri Matisse, the color fields pioneered by Mark Rothko, and the soak stain technique developed by Helen Frankenthaler. Scottie employs all of these techniques to shape her own mixed media style. Scottie likens her artwork to entering a dialogue with the pieces of material and canvas, the shapes, the colors and the assemblage, until the collage responds and emphatically says, “I’m fully formed.”
Scottie’s penchant for the old and new inspired her to earn a B.A. in history and later to pursue a lifelong, personal study of art history. She often pairs abstract art with old frames found at antique stores, or frames she constructs herself, believing that the right frame is a key ingredient in enhancing the viewing pleasure of the art itself.
When not painting, Scottie spends her time raising two teenage sons with her husband, runs marathons, and is a devoted volunteer in her community. Since 1990 Scottie has been a Texas resident and regularly forgives those who eat supper after dark and call it dinner.