Amber Scoon

GAR Distinguished Artist/Teacher: Amber Scoon
August 2022

Amber Scoon makes art, books and events. She received her BS from New York University, her MFA in Painting from American University in Italy, and her PhD in Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought from the European Graduate School in Switzerland, where she is currently the John Berger Fellow. Amber published Quantum Art: Mimesis, Uncertainty and the Infinite with accolades from John Berger and an introduction by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Paul Salopek. Amber has also published Letters to John Berger, ? (co-written with artist Glenn Goldberg) and Conversations and Uncertainty (Atropos Press, Dresden/ New York). Amber’s latest exhibition is The Abandoned Phone Booth in Florence, MA.

From Amber Scoon’s Artist Statement: 

Amber makes objects and paintings, using watercolor, pencil and found materials. The works are often carried in processions that recall a walk with friends, a mourning procession or a marching band. Amber’s recent work bears witness to the experience of women and children: the daily labor of living, the process of migration, and the experience of violence. The paintings are also about mourning and allowing for fear and pain. They are also about the wildness of observation, possibility and curiosity, and the sensation of magic. These paintings are pushed along by a wave of love and admiration for the resistance and strength of women and children everywhere.

As a professor and mother of a small child in school, I am routinely faced with the physical and psychological effects of terror: the threat, the memory, the preparation and what happens. It is difficult to sit with these feelings and often seems necessary to push them away.

I’m also living with an intense and joyful curiosity, I easily step outside of time. I watch the world as if my body has no outlines. I feel the swooping line of a bird in flight, the hieroglyphic-looking marks that bark beetles leave behind on trees, the thoughts of my dog and the place where the bare treetops on the top of the mountain meet the sky. I trace the edges of stones stacked and re-stacked to form a wall. I point my toe or hum one note. I catch my friend’s moment of surprise. I hear the sound of rain—All these things create an indescribable sensation, akin only to sunshine, orgasm and swimming.

Watch the recording of Scoon’s talk here - at the Cape Ann Museum August 20, 2022.

Amber Scoon’s website: www.amberscoon.com