The Diaries of Little Red Hen : Paintings by Michael Scott

The Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. WESTON ART GALLERY in the Aronoff Center for the Arts announces three new exhibitions: Filter, a site-specific installation that investigates the transmission of light and color by Frederick Ellenberger, addresses, for the first time, an area of the Aronoff Center beyond the traditional confines of the gallery; Irato, a highly imaginative sound installation by Anthony Luensman inspired by the acoustic elements of the gallery’s upper exhibition space; and The Diaries of Little Red Hen, the latest installment in Michael Scott’s whimsical yet satirical series of paintings that presents a colorful cast of bird characters set within a tableaux rich in contemporary commentary and art historical references.

Michael Scott has long been regarded as a versatile and technically superlative painter. In his most recent body of work, Scott has invented a complex, whimsical and satirical world inhabited by bird characters modeled on the rare and domestic fowl he raises on his farm in New Richmond, Oh. Exquisitely executed, the paintings combine traditional art historical references to portraiture, still life and landscape with contemporary commentary by presenting the birds as a unique and colorful set of characters that participate in a complex narrative culled from the artist’s fertile imagination.

The Diaries of Little Red Hen is the artistic sequel to Scott’s highly acclaimed series of paintings from 1999’s Penny’s Grand Vision, which debuted the exotic and opinionated cast of bird personages. The central theme of Penny’s Grand Vision revolved around the meaning of creativity. In The Diaries of Little Red Hen, Scott continues this quest for the source of inspiration, masterfully unfolding his amusing and clever tale through a meticulously detailed series of thirty oil paintings. The accompanying catalogue chronicles the complex relationships and motivations of the engaging cast of feathered characters.

Michael Scott is a life-long resident of the Midwest. He earned a bachelor of fine arts from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1976, and a master of fine arts from the University of Cincinnati in 1978. His paintings have been shown extensively, both locally and regionally. His work is represented in numerous private, corporate and museum collections including the Cincinnati Art Museum; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Oh.; the Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, Tn.; the J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville, Ky.; and the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, Ark.

A full-color exhibition catalogue with essays by David T. Johnson and David Clemmer accompanies the exhibition and is available for sale at the gallery.