Growing up in the South has influenced my outlook and approach to painting. Living in a hot and sweaty environment you have to look underneath and consider both sides to any story or event. I see my own visual voice developing along a path more similar to a southern writer like Flannery O’Conner than any painter that comes to mind. Existing as a human being in the modern-day world supplies the moral deliberations in my work.
I paint in a non-linear manner where images come and go in search of their own needs, fulfillment, and atonement. In the process of coming to an image, I frequently add or subtract figures, change night into day, or transform an interior scene into a landscape. I may begin a painting thinking of it as a song of love and witness the work become one of sorrow, or an angry image can sometimes turn into a sweet and caring work. The paintings teach me about myself. They arrive on their own terms and in their own visual moment. ———Scott Belville
