Scott McCracken

Scott McCracken is a painter living and working in London.  He studied at Edinburgh College of Art (2005-2011) and Turps Art School (2015-17).  In 2017 he was awarded the Darbyshire Prize for Art and was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2019.  His work has been exhibited in solo shows at Borough Road Gallery, London; GaleriHi10, Skien; Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London.  Group shows include Maya Frodeman Gallery, Wyoming; HilbertRaum, Berlin; Oceans Apart, Manchester; APT Gallery, London; Paul Stolper Gallery, London, Pada Gallery, Lisbon.  He is Programme Leader and mentor at Turps Art School and frequently writes about painting.

In Scott McCracken’s paintings, suns are a frequent motif. Or maybe they’re circles? Some of the circles act like bullseyes. Others appear to spin, like pinwheels, or rotate, like gears in a machine. To look at these paintings is to see the painter’s consciousness at work. It is a grammar of forms, the emphasis placed, changed, and reiterated. Parentheses become crescent moons; an aside made solid. Exclamations become soundwaves become tides. A thought bubble contains a wordless quote, underlined until the lines themselves become the statement. Traces of earlier permutations of the painting are revealed, remnants of past decisions, like long dead stars whose light is still reaching us.  Toggling between construction and alchemy, McCracken uses elemental shapes as building blocks. He combines depth with flatness, light with shadow, lava with water. He establishes the ground, then reconsiders, and chooses the ether. He zeroes in on the smoking residue after the “POW!”. It is the ghost of an experience, seeping from an envelope. Scattered, turned, and repeated until ashes are all that’s left, a puddle after the flood. Your position is marked: YOU ARE HERE. But this is no map, only a collection of Xs. You have arrived at your starting point. You have reached your destination.  

Rachel Jeffers, 2024