Sunstruck

Scott treats sunsets less as a subject than as a disturbance to vision. A searing orange band cuts through the landscape while delicate blue wildflowers flicker against it like marks on a score. The palette belongs partly to the landscape and partly to the retina—the strange, intensified world that appears when the eye has looked at light for a little too long. This petite study was painted as quickly as possible just outside the artist’s studio, with the light changing by the breath: an exhale, a shift in color; an inhale, another mark. Working with palette knives and her fingers, Scott raced the disappearing sun, pressing each stroke into place before the landscape could become something else.