Chicago-based multimedia artist Gregory Scott talks about returning to the art world at age fifty, and the important basis of a personal vision in his complex, tromp l'oeil works.
"I think gimmick is a very, very useful tool. If you go to the art shows, you'll see a lot of gimmick work. The problem is, a lot of it stops at the gimmick. It's like, "Look what I can do." One thing I've always done and always will do is make work that, even though there may be gimmick on the surface, that's just to draw the audience in. Once they're there, what they're going to see can only be done by me."
Gregory Scott is a multimedia artist working with photography, painting, installation, and video and is represented primarily by Catherine Edelman Gallery. Scott attended the Illinois Institute of Technology's now defunct undergraduate Institute of Design school, a program founded by László Moholy-Nagy in 1937 as the New Bauhaus. After graduating with a degree in visual communications, Scott worked for approximately thirty years as a graphic designer, eventually opening his own design firm. Scott turned back to art when he began taking classes at the Evanston Art Center, and at fifty years old he began attending Indiana University for an MFA. Scott's work has been widely collected, both from art fairs and gallery shows.