Lindsay Scott

Internationally renowned artist Lindsay Scott is acclaimed for her dynamic and precise oil paintings and her exquisitely detailed pencil drawings, all of which convey the drama and spirit of North American and African wildlife. With a background as an illustrator, a botanical researcher and a biologist, Scott is an avid observer of nature, and her works reflect her close study of animal life, exuding a candid sense of firsthand experience while capturing intimate emotional moments.

Growing up in her native Zimbabwe, a tropical setting surrounded Scott, and she spent her youth watching and learning to survive in the bush. She began to draw at an early age, and a high school art teacher, who recognized her skills, encouraged her to pursue art as a career. Accordingly, she moved to Cape Town, South Africa, to attend the Michealis School of Fine Art. At the time, the school was emphasizing abstract art, and the representational work that interested Scott was discouraged. She therefore supplemented her studies by taking courses in botany, biology and zoology and doing field sketches of plants and wildlife. To continue her studies, she transferred to the University of Minnesota, where she earned a degree in fine art and minored in biology.

On her return to South Africa, Scott became a botanical researcher at the University of Cape Town and a curator of paleobotany and ornithology at the South African Museum. She also led natural history field trips throughout Africa and Antarctica and spent fourteen months in Australia researching bird behavior for the National Geographic Society. During this period, Scott recorded her observations on numerous sketchpads.

In 1984, when one of Scott’s drawings was chosen for Birds in Art, the prestigious annual exhibition at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, she decided to devote her full attention to art. In her characteristic style, she developed meticulous illustration methods and melded an expressive use of paint to create images that appear tightly rendered from a distance, but upon closer examination reveal fluid brushwork that gives forms a blurred and abstract appearance. A key to Scott’s art is that rather than focusing on individual objects, she is primarily attentive to reflected light and the way it integrates pictorial elements.

I don’t think of painting objects but rather painting the light as it reflects from them. And I do this by using a very limited palette, just eight basic colors with the occasional addition of a few others, and I mix the same colors for both the subject and the environment. If every color somehow shows a touch of the other colors in a piece, everything comes together: subject, background and especially the light.

This harmony is readily apparent in Scott’s works, which combine naturalistic fact with a strong feeling for light and mood.

Scott has exhibited her art extensively in America, England and Africa and has received a number of important honors including an Award of Excellence from the Society of Animal Artist in 1992 and best of show and first place at the Pacific Rim Wildlife Art Show in Tacoma, Washington, in the same year.

When she is not traveling the world in search of her subjects, Scott and her husband, Brian McPhon, split their time between California and the Marakana Valley in New Zealand.

1. Quoted in Michael McIntosh, “Painting the Journey: New Directions for Lindsay Scott,”
Wildlife Art 15 (January – February 1996), p. 26
* Excerpt from Wildlife Art 2000