HRHA

b. 1921

“With the help of the British Museum in 1964, he [Scott] evolved a method of using an acrylic medium to fix gold leaf to unprimed canvas, which has led him into an unprecedented wealth of visual invention. Using 8cm squares of gold leaf applied to raw canvas, with a thin white tempera the only other colour, he produced a series of large abstract works in which the three textures of gold, canvas and tempera are exquisitely balanced to a synthesis of each element. The geometric abstraction of the circle and its segments, combined with rectilinear interlaced bands of white, not only returns to his pure architectural composition but also relates directly to ancient Irish gold objects of the pre-Celtic era”. (Dorothy Walker, Patrick Scott, The Douglas Hyde Gallery, TCD, 1981, p.26).