Artist, Art, Science, Patrons...
David Scotland is something of a maverick in the art world. In many cases, he remains unflappably indifferent or sometimes even bored by anyone who tries to interpret his work or hold an opinion about him, including art critics (both "lay" and professional), art historians, patrons, and museum curators. His attitude about art and artmaking is romantic, spiritual, and scientific -- based on physics of light and sound frequencies that have been scientifically proven to heal and rebalance the human energy system when the result is sympathetic resonance. He is also passionate about his work, and he believes that most people are not going to be able to understand what he’s doing or why.
Born in Chicago in 1970, Scotland spent time in Utah, Washington, Tennessee, Arizona, and Oregon before settling in California to live and work. In so doing, he rejected the politics of the art world scene, which has earned him both high praise and vehement criticism with some going so far as to call him a lunatic, a total quack, and full of crap. Still, the artist remains umoved because he knows those who haven’t received wholehearted joy into their lives can only be miserable, themselves. All the more reason to have his art, the artist believes, because all cries from fear are all calls for inspiration – what the artist considers the literal embodying of heaing energies that come from the literal action of inspiring, otherwise known as breathing or breathwork as practiced by spiritual masters, yoga practitioners, and other sages of great eternal wisdom.
Scotland paints various sizes of abstract canvases with many layers of paint and varnish often characterized by his signature style of painterly, jagged “volts” of colors. The flame-like shards and blasts of color are often overlapping each other and trail off the canvas, continuing the painting “beyond the frame,” or sides of the piece, and also continuing into its own depths within the canvas. Scotland insists that there are five styles that have both connection and relevance to his mature, signature look. To the critics, he says, "Well, it’s my work, not anyone else’s. I decide what it is, if it is art, and not anyone else. Anyone else’s opinion, to me, has no bearing on the creative process, therefore anyone else’s opinion about me or my work is totally irrelevant and probably the beginnings of pipe dreams and specious arguments by lower frequency persons who are just like the walking dead. Jesus has a few words to say about those people and I happened to agree with His advice: ‘Let the dead bury the dead.’ I mean, they’re not happy anyway, which is sad.”
Scotland prefers his paintings of Companionism to be exhibited in groups with one master Companion resonating apart from the group in a separate location, like a parent safely watching over his children playing on the playground. He feels that his paintings can only be understood by spiritually advanced people who calibrate at a level of 310 or above on the Map of Human Consciousness developed by David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., and further scientific studies have corroborated that his paintings do, in fact, bring the viewer into balance as a result of increased theta wave production.
Thus, each “companion” is part of a whole, with the whole being the resonating frequency of unconditional love that emanates from his entire body of work. This obsession with maintaining absolute alignment with energy that calibrates at or above 500 has resulted in his rejection of offers to buy his paintings by certain patrons, museums, and curators, and refusing what he considers to be specious awards and honors, and declining invitations to hyped interviews, media appearances, and exhibition opportunities with anyone who does not calibrate at level 310 or above. He remains unwavering in his focus, incapable of being swayed by anyone at all, especially irrelevant are those who sadly calibrate below 310.
And it is not because the artist thinks they are irrelevant and do not matter as human beings, but rather that those people have chosen, of their own accord, to remain at lower frequencies and think of themselves as irrelevant and worthless. Thus, they experience life with negativity, zero optimism, and qualities of fear, envy, jealousy, pride, anger, sloth, desire, grief, apathy, guilt, and shame, depression, delusion, and insanity. Says Scotland, "Frankly, those things are not my audience. I deal with people who know they're alive and who value willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, and enlightened wisdom of pure consciousness. Nothing else matters and no one else matters. Love does not condemn, criticize, or complain and I will not use the creative muse that runs through me to expose violence, hatred, prejudice, or ignorance. I will not do it. I am here to join with people in remembering ALL of WHO we REALLY are. That's it."
Lady Sascha Siegel, the former personal design coordinator for First Lady Jackie Kennedy and design coordinator for President Kennedy’s Oval Office, quickly won over Scotland's trust and admiration along with four others belonging to the group of his first five art patrons: Dr. Eugene and Janice Ephron with their daughter and son in law. All five had finally convinced Scotland, at his first official art reception, of both the maturity and importance of his work. Scotland allowed Sascha two paintings, Dr. and Mrs. Ephron two paintings, and their daughter and her husband four paintings. Scotland’s manager, Randall Blaum, finally convinced the artist to agree to a rare and first of its kind live performance exhibition as the launch of the World Premiere of Scotland’s art movement, Companionism, at the Portland Art Museum in 2006.
Pleased with Lady Siegel’s and Dr. and Mrs. Ephron’s reception of his work, in 2005 Scotland allowed fourteen paintings to be received by Portland Habitat for Humanity’s fourteen families of that year’s buildsite, the master Companion in Scotland’s private collection to be placed, in time, in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Scotland included an array of works spanning the complete range of his signature styles, including three “chakra” pieces in the resonant hues of red, blue, and yellow which, together, vibrate at the frequencies of what in music theory is called “the chord of nature” when played by the tones and overtones of the C-major chord with scale degrees of 1,3,5,1 (C,E,G,C).
This “chord of nature” resonates at the frequency human beings recognize as unconditional love, setting about a sympathetic resonant frequency pattern within the environment conducive to higher states of consciousness, improved strength, coordination, and balance, to name a few. According to the terms of the artist, the paintings must be exhibited in a “family” of companions, all of the time, allowing them to resonate together and envelop the families in a “protective force-field” of higher energies the artist calls “the Source of Resonance” loosely translated as the energy of prayer, grace, joy, gratefulness, and loving blessings.
Several of Scotland’s paintings have been requested by Arizona State University to undergo further scientific testing at their labs which are considered to be among some of the premiere physics labs in the world.
Scotland is the founder of the 21st Century art movement Companionism™ that uses what he calls Quantum Aesthetics™ as their method of creation.
To view photos of David Scotland’s art, receptions, appearances with Hollywood and Nashville A-List superstars, and photos of his very first reception which includes photos of Lady Sascha Siegel, Dr. Eugene and Janice Ephron, their daughter Collette and her husband, and others like then Mayor of the City of Vista -- Morris Vance, David Mirisch – the same Mirisch family that has earned 58 Oscar nominations and won 24 Oscars for some of the most successful Hollywood films of all time, Beate Rusee from the board of The Oceanside Museum of Art, and Sunny Chayes, patron of David Scotland and niece of Joe and Jory Shapiro who are founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and former President of the Art Institute of Chicago, please see the “Special Photos” section available for viewing at his website: www.DavidScotlandArt.com
His works are available direct from the studio: www.DavidScotlandArt.com
