“Somewhere along the way the pearl would be handed to me.” — Jack Kerouac, On the Road

The magic only took about 60 years. I saw the magic last week in one of Scott’s landscape paintings at the Springville Museum of Art in Utah. The painting was leaning against the wall before being hung in the gallery. Another work obscured all but two inches of the painting. The subject was indistinguishable from the narrow sample of the work I could see, but the magic of the painting was as clear in the sample as it was in the entirety of the painting. The luster, the brushwork, and the depth of color were rich and complex yet subtle as a pearl. I could see the destination of a long road in that thin strip of a landscape. Somewhere along the way, Scott was given the pearl.

Scott has been on the road to painting that landscape for sixty years. I have known that journey first-hand for the fifty years that Scott has been my friend. Like Jack Kerouac, Scott has worked his way through the landscape with side jobs. He didn’t pick cotton, and he wasn’t a night watchman like Jack. But he did become a CPA and an attorney to support the journey.

Years ago, I saw Scott across a studio in a life drawing class at the University of Utah. I had lost track of him for a few years, and at the time, I didn’t even know he was in the county. I hadn’t seen him since he was living in Italy. A few months later, I was just as surprised to see him by chance in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. And I remember my surprise when he decided to leave his law practice behind and devote his life to his art by moving to New York. After two years in New York, on to London for another degree at City Guild. This time in printmaking.

Looking down the road behind us, I don’t know where it happened. He may have found the pearl in the eight years he spent studying the masters in the National Gallery in London. Maybe the work was tempered in Hells Kitchen in New York. Perhaps it was refined by his years in Italy. My best guess is that the entire journey created the pearl. One layer at a time. Different elements. Different layers of experience and disciplines. Rough patches that made the smooth layers. And miles of laughter, joy, and kindness added the color and beauty. Scott helped and inspired hundreds of people along the way. Hopefully, some even encouraged and inspired him to keep going. He went the distance and what looked like magic wasn’t magic at all. It’s an artist’s life work. It’s all there in the landscape. Take a close look. You’ll see the pearl too.