Biography
John Scott (1950-2022) is considered an important and revolutionary multidisciplinary Canadian artist whose eclectic oeuvre focused on themes related to the human condition. He was best known for his expressive, raw-edged, graphic drawings and paintings using basic materials like black oil stick and charcoal.
Scott’s artistic vision was considered ‘apocalyptic’ by some, given his dark, often grim view of the world that offered social commentary on modern-day politics, capitalism and war.
Scott was born to a ‘blue-collar’ family in 1950 in Windsor, Ontario. His father worked in a local factory and died of emphysema when John was only 11 years old. As a teenager, John left school after Grade Ten and, to help support his family, worked on assembly lines in factory jobs. Having grown up with the challenges inherent in the daily grind of a factory worker’s life, he became involved in unions fighting for workers’ rights.
In 1972, he followed his older brother to Toronto and for the next four years attended the Ontario College of Art, the University of Toronto and Centennial College. Scott’s work was heavily influenced by both street culture and the hard rock music scene in the city.
John Scott became a Professor in the Drawing and Painting program of the Faculty of Art at OCAD University in Toronto and taught there for 38 years.
In 2000, Scott was given the inaugural Governor General's Award in Visual Arts and Media. He exhibited extensively across Canada, and his work can be found in private and public collections in both Canada and the United States, notably the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2014, Scott had his first major travelling survey exhibition in the United States at the Grinnell College Museum of Art in Iowa. In the spring of 2024, a major exhibition called ‘John Scott: Firestorm’, dedicated to Scott's work on mechanical inventions of mankind, both military and civilian, opened at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario.