R. Scott Colglazier is an abstract expressionist painter living in Bloomington, Indiana. After a long career as a successful clergyperson, writer and scholar, he began painting fulltime in 2019. His work is characterized by the bold use of color, color fields, stripes, dots, and texture. He readily acknowledges that Sean Scully and Stanley Whitney, to name two, are significant inspirations for his work. He is especially interested in how abstract work provides insight into the depths of human feeling and thinking, recognizing that there is an “outer” world the painter observes and an “inner” world of feeling and awareness the painter is trying to share with viewers. As much as anything, his painting is a source for inner reflection and spiritual awareness. Colglazier curated several art exhibitions in Los Angeles before returning to his home state of Indiana a few years ago. He has had several successful solo shows and commissions around the country.
We are living in a lean time. A difficult time. Many of us are dismayed with what we see happening in our country and fear for the future of our democracy. Additionally, what we know is that in our daily lives “shit” happens. It happens to us in devastatingly personal ways, like when we lose our job or are forced to begin chemotherapy, or in annoyingly common ways, like trying to negotiate a new cell phone plan. I find myself turning repeatedly to art to recover the fragments of my humanity. Art nurtures the deepest me within me and the deepest you within you. Art makes us think and feel. It connects us to something that is at once deeply within us, while at the same time moving us toward something bigger than ourselves. Furthermore, art has a way of bringing people together as we share in the beauty of what we see and experience. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur argued that art is possessed with a “surplus of meaning.” That was his way of saying that art overflows with a thick, resonating world of meaning. Abstract art is especially defined by an extravagance of meaning. When a painting offers a specific figure, for example, that automatically narrows the world of meaning within the painting. An abstract work, on the other hand, is an attempt to both deconstruct the literal world, while at the same time creating a new world of meaning that is expansive and amorphous. My paintings are simple. Lines. Dots. Swirls. Fields of color. Yet, if one is willing to be seduced by the simple nature of these paintings, their simplicity can lure you into a deeper, more complex human experience. Within these paintings are feelings of grief, loss and pain. But there is also hope and light, and love of course, always love. I often feel despair as I look upon our fractured world. But then I look at the colors of these works, or I contemplate the sinewy lines that move across the canvas like painterly thoughts, painterly feelings, or I see dots of paint that constellate into a small universe upon the canvas, a universe that becomes an extraordinary room with a cosmic view, I begin to feel my humanity come back to life. It’s the power of art. The power of beauty.