Joseph McGurl

Raised where the East Coast suburbs filtered into the woods and farms, Scott Conary (Rhode Island School of Design, BFA ’93) creates expressive oil paintings with rich surfaces of everyday objects and places, often those with which we have complicated and ambiguous relationships. Pulled from their context, these objects say something about how we interact with the world and one another. These are stories of the arbitrary nature of beauty, of melancholy, of fleeting triumph, and the camouflage of time: the mess and splendor of the broken egg, the weed that fights to survive in the gaps of our attention, the weathered door used for generations but now forgotten, and so on. Fueling and inspiring this work is his young daughter’s battle with complicated heart defects, her experiences with disability, and the impact this has had on those around her. This has directed his focus toward the narratives and tensions in the familiar, and is why he wanders deeper into the thicket of representational work. Conary's work is in collections nationally and internationally, and has been exhibited widely including Salmagundi’s American Masters shows. Conary is represented by the Principle Gallery (Alexandria, VA), Bowersock Gallery (Provincetown, MA), Turner Fine Art (Jackson, WY), and the Charlestown Gallery (Charlestown, RI). As an extension of his love of paint, Conary gives lectures and runs workshops and classes around the country and online. He and his family live in Portland, Oregon.