Heaven

About Heaven

This contemporary acrylic painting is a graffiti-style portrait by John Scott.

The raw, dark and powerful imagery of multimedia artist John Scott had a big impact on Canadian art. The Toronto-based artist drew, painted and re-imagined existing objects as sculptural installations. His accessible artwork is informed by his working-class background, his love of street art and heavy rock music. Growing up during the Cold War era and the threat of nuclear war resulted in themes that reveal his anti-war politics and his genuine anguish at the negative effects of capitalism on humanity. In this piece, the face of an individual whose expression registers as terror is rendered in a bold palette of charcoal black, red, green and white. The heavy black lines of this simple image underscore the darkness of the piece. The word ‘Heaven’ appears above his crowned head.
Scott was known for his wry sense of humour—possibly evident here in the title of the painting.

“I think that almost everything I do is a self-portrait.” John Scott

“John Scott views himself as a political activist and blue-collar artist. His work combines counterculture aesthetics of the late 1970s and the 1980s with a sociological ideology that is wary of the consequences and human cost of a capitalist ethos and economy.” National Gallery of Canada

“His artistic creations have drawn comparisons to those of American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), who similarly explored themes of mortality, destruction, and the disparity between wealth and poverty. In the wake of Basquiat’s passing and his rise to fame, Scott has been dubbed the “Basquiat of Canada.” It is important to note that Scott, being ten years Basquiat’s senior, had already established his artistic identity well before Basquiat’s initial creations.” Roy Bernardi, Art Critic, Dart Magazine

John Scott (1950-2022) was born to a working-class family in 1950 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 at assembly line jobs.
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 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, he was the first recipient of the Governor General's Award in Visual Arts and Media.
John Scott exhibited extensively, 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.