Posted by Times Chronicle | Aug 12, 2022 | Arts, Featured, Osoyoos | 0

By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle

When Peter Scott retired from a nearly 30 year career as an art educator to elementary, secondary and college students, little could he know the ‘warmest welcome’ he was going to receive from Osoyoos. 

With a passion for B.C.’s Cariboo region, Scott and his wife had set off for a one year teaching job in Quesnel and liked it so much they stayed for nearly three decades. During that time his passion for education focused on everything from painting to sculpture to print making and more in between. 

His teaching job occupied the days and two four-hour studio teaching sessions at the local college absorbed more time.  Back at home he would often strap on snowshoes for to trek into the wilderness to sketch. 

His painting became a late night endeavour, often starting at midnight and stretching to the wee hours of the morning. And he also did shows. And somewhere in between all this he and his wife raised two children.

Naturally then, the thought of giving all this up for a retirement life in Osoyoos unnerved him. Soon after arriving he took on a task offered by the Osoyoos Museum to restore some of the murals by renowned Canadian artist Jack Campbell. Campbell had been commissioned back in the ‘80s to do a mural on what used to be an old fruit packing house where Watermark Beach Resort sits today. 

“When I moved here in 2012 I was looking for something to do and they asked me if I would restore the murals,” he said. He added it took a very long time and brought with it the challenges of working in the old museum building with its denizens of spiders, lizards and snakes and of course inclement temperatures in the winter. 

Peter Scott at work in the Artists on Main studio above the Osoyoos art gallery on Main Street. Don Urquhart photo

But the warmest embrace came in a slightly different fashion courtesy of the Artists on Main collective.  One of the first people he met in Osoyoos was well-known artist Sandra Albow, “who’s like the Van Gogh of Osoyoos,” Scott says. 

Albow invited him to join the 50 or so artists that made up the collective at the time, working out of the studios above The Art Gallery Osoyoos. It turned out to be the perfect transition from art educator to full time artist. 

“I walked up here and I was so welcome, I can’t say enough about them. They are awesome and they helped me transition from teacher to full time painter. If it wasn’t for Artists on Main I’d be sitting at home twiddling my thumbs.” 

And so began Scott’s ‘Osoyoos period’, if you will. Those seeing Scott’s works for the first time – which revolve entirely around impressionist landscapes – can be forgiven for thinking of Lawren 

Harris’ works as part of the famed Group of Seven. And indeed there is a subtle connecting thread here. 

Scott was fortunate enough to study under renowned painter Gordon A. Smith who was a key figure in the Vancouver art scene during the latter half of the 20th century. He is best known for what have been described as “monumental, modernist abstractions of the West Coast landscape”. He was also influential as a teacher and philanthropist and was made a Member of the Order of Canada. 

Smith, as it turns out, was friends with Lawren Harris. The two of them, Scott relates, would gather on Saturday nights at Smith’s Arthur Erickson-designed house in West Vancouver to watch Hockey Night in Canada. Interestingly enough Harris had a peculiar habit of dressing in a suit and tie and would paint while watching the hockey game. 

Scott relates this story having heard many from Smith who went from being his professor to his mentor and friend. “For some reason Gordon took me under his wing and taught me a lot of the tricks Lawren Harris taught him. Like painting the sky last, not painting trees on top of the background but painting the background around the trees, stuff like that,” he recollects. 

Judging from Scott’s substantial portfolio it was a tremendous talent that surely took on a patina of artistic enlightenment from his mentor and by extension, Harris too. 

Scott’s works are breathtaking not simply for their artistic beauty but for the visceral connection to our awe-inspiring British Columbia landscape. Many of his works focus on the majestic mountains around Chilliwack where Scott grew up. It’s an environment near and dear to his heart, “but I’m also really into the Osoyoos sky and lake imagery,” he adds.

Midway through our conversation in the quiet, almost lonely, surrounds of the Artists on Main studio (most of his artistic friends have either moved away or transferred to a studio at the Cactus Centre), Scott drops a bombshell. He’s colour blind. 

I’m nearly speechless. How is it possible to create such beautiful art with no perception of colour? “All part of the legend,” he laughs. The answer apparently is simple: “I’m a tonal painter,” he replies plainly. 

“I don’t paint peaches or cherries. I don’t do oranges, pinks, reds,” he says. He found out about the colour blindness earlier in life when he was taking lessons to be a pilot, adding he was “annoyed” when informed he couldn’t possibly be a pilot because of it. 

In actual fact Scott almost didn’t become an artist at all. Certainly if his father had his way, he would be wielding a chainsaw not a paint brush. This meant he had to employ subterfuge to get his fine art education. 

While studying art at UBC he also studied cartography, telling his father that it was for a future forestry career. And he did dabble in that sector, just not quite to the extent his father might have imagined.

“In the summers I would work as a faller for the forestry department and I would take my camera and photograph and sketch and then I would go back to the studio and paint.” 

And while he overcame the seemingly substantial hurdle of colour blindness, a new challenge came his way about five years ago in the form of a stroke that left his dominant painting hand shaky. 

It doesn’t seem to faze him, rather more annoyance than anything. “So when I’m painting now, like the trees, I’m holding my brush and supporting it with my other hand. I also use big brushes now and big swooping motions. I don’t do detail anymore.”

It doesn’t seem to matter in the final equation. The style may look a bit different from earlier years but the beauty and power of the natural world comes alive on his canvas as it surely always has.

A selection of Peter Scott’s works are currently showing at the Wayside Select Books & Art at 8317 Main St. in Osoyoos until the second week of September. His works can also be viewed online at peterscott.ca. 

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