The Big Wonderful constitutes a return, a homecoming for and in art. For Iris Scott, this odyssey is one that plays out from a childhood spent reveling in nature and back again. It is a culmination of works that began in her first solo show in NYC with Filo Sofi arts and brought her finally to New Mexico, to the landscapes and animals that speak through her to audiences, inviting them to take a moment to let all that is big and wonderful in this world wash over them.
The theme of childhood and its rebelliousness runs throughout The Big Wonderful. It is full of precociousness as Scott’s vibrant color palette and thickly applied paint indulges in the playfulness and spontaneity of childlike wonder. But it is play and wonder with an underlying purpose – to affirm beauty in a world obsessed with ugliness. It is in this affirmation of nature and its value that Scott speaks most clearly to audiences. Placed in the service of striking awe in the viewer, Scott’s technical skill sends a powerful message about our need to return to a more immediate connection with and appreciation for the world that springs up around us. Maintaining a distinctly playful quality, the paintings on offer here mark a master coming into her own.
While the value of finger painting may have been questionable prior to Scott’s arrival, the works here are those of an artist who has cultivated a technique to new and unprecedented heights. These efforts mark a return, a return to childhood perhaps, but a return that carries with it skills and knowledge a lifetime in the making. Between exuberance and calculation, Scott’s intimately constructed pieces evoke light and darkness in their timeless dance and harmonious synthesis. It is a return to nature, a defiant gesture against abstraction in favor of concrete representations of the world as it is lived and, more importantly, as it is loved.
The Big Wonderful is big. The canvases stretch on for yards, allowing the viewer to become totally immersed in their rich chromoscapes. Taken over and aback by the overwhelming bigness of their wonder, anyone standing before these works are encouraged to let themselves go, to forget for a moment the worries imposed on them by a life of harried disconnection and rediscover a living connection between themselves, the painting, and the world. This invitation is radical in its message of reconnection, rediscovery, and return.
In The Big Wonderful, we are all invited to experience this return, this homecoming. It is not naïve. It is a return after a long journey into night. A morning’s return to daylight, to laughter, to a joy all the more significant because it is a joy made conscious of its precarity and therefore, of its preciousness. Shake off the sleep of abstraction and answer this invitation with a resounding “Yes!”
