Opening Reception: MICHAEL SCOTT | Poems from the Fire
Friday, April 24, 2026, 5pm–7pm opening reception. Exhibition runs through May 23, 2026. The artist will be in attendance.
Inspired by summer evenings in Maine sitting in front of a bonfire, Michael Scott’s new body of small paintings and poems (framed together) are reflections on the brevity of our lives within the context of cosmological time.
“Sitting before the flame I felt the heat of its breath like a blanket over me.
It asked, ‘What are you made of? Now that you feel my warmth,
are you the same as the glowing log? The rock that holds the heat?’
Where do all things begin, and will nature’s belongings return to their Origin?”
This poem, written in ink below the image of the fire pit in front of the lake, is the nugget of the intention behind these intimate works. Immediate and volatile, Fire sits within the context of a northern landscape which is incomprehensibly ancient. Fire is the transient being—our human experience of time. The landscape, a result of glacial and geological movements, is cosmological time 4.56 billion years in the making. By assigning these meanings to the painting’s content, the images and poetry ask viewers to consider how human experience fits within earth’s much longer rhythms. Contemplating one’s own life in this larger context can offer a transformational understanding; an affirmation of one’s significance and responsibility to the natural world we live within.
