Scott Finch
ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I paint flat.  This removes the artist’s hand from the viewer’s thoughts.  There is no 
sensuous handling of paint to regard, only a network of relationships between images.  
It is my intention that each painting will thwart the impulse that viewers have to “solve”
an image.  I want these images to remain unsettled.  Paintings should sustain the viewer’s
active engagement.  The urge to reassure and satisfy the rational mind must never be 
indulged.  
When I try to make a painting with a specific meaning in mind it becomes an illustration, 
something secondary.  Instead, I allow a painting to emerge in response to a cluster of 
ideas without a predetermined outcome.  I draw upon my thoughts and experiences, but 
my intention is never to make something literal and static.  A painting should transcend 
and become an autonomous, irreducible new fact like a prime number.  I believe that art 
expresses the spirit in this way.