Stephen Scott Young Watercolors

Stephen Scott Young is a masterful artist who divides his time painting in his studio in Jupiter, Florida, on the roads of Eleuthera, and the streets of Greenville, South Carolina.

 

Young’s passion for the people and picturesque places of the Bahamas was serendipitous. He met and married Anna Farrington, a fellow art student at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, in 1981. Farrington is a seventh generation descendant of Bahamian settlers, and so, Young was introduced to the islands.

 

Stephen Scott Young’s Talent and Empathy

Young describes himself as a hermit. He says that being an army brat, who moved from base-to-base every year, made it difficult to make friends. He is passionate about his work, which keeps him busy, but his life is far from solitary.

 

Although Young spends much time painting, alone, in his studio, he is not quite a hermit. Young has a wife and two daughters. He paints people…and spends a lot of time getting to know them…especially the people in Eleuthera.

 

“I like to find somewhere that I can feel comfortable and know the people instead of going there as a stranger,” he said about his trips to Eleuthera. “I knew everybody that I was painting. Most of the kids I started painting when they were really young and painted them until they became adults and then had children of their own. Then I ended up painting their children.”

 

Young is not just a master of watercolor, but also of etching. He uses a drybrush technique for his watercolors, the same technique used by Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. With drybrush, the brush is loaded with damp pigment and then scraped across the paper. The technique creates depth, texture and warmth. What comes through in Young’s work, is not just his mastery of technique, but also his empathy for his subjects.

 

In 2008, after Barack Obama won the presidential election, Oprah Winfrey presented him with a painting by Stephen Scott Young. Oprah is a collector of Young’s work.

 

Stephen Scott Young in Greenville

The Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina owns the the largest public collection of Stephen Scott Young’s work. For four years, beginning in 1993, Young painted people he met in Greenville, some well-known, others whom he met on the street.

 

Last year the museum exhibited Stephen Scott Young: Veterans, a show of paintings that Young created of American veterans from World War ll to the present. This year the museum will exhibit works from his Regatta Series, which Young began in 2014, using pen and ink, compressed white charcoal and conte crayon…a departure from his usual technique.

 

Stephen Scott Young at Surovek Gallery

Please contact us for more information about Pale Afternoon, Sketching or any of the other work from Stephen Scott Young available at Surovek Gallery.

February 28, 2018