Scott Niemi

Scott Niemi

Scott Niemi — Artist’s Biograph

Born: Fitchburg, MA

Scott Niemi was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts and went on to complete his formal education at Florida Atlantic University where he earned a M.F.A. in Visual Art, focusing on painting and drawing. Currently, he is a Teaching Professor at Clark University in Worcester, MA. Before teaching at Clark, Scott was a professor of Interactive Media at Becker College (Worcester, MA), where he taught in the Interactive Media/Design program from 2005- 2021. Additionally, he has worked for Florida Atlantic University as an adjunct art professor, as a part-time lecturer at Franklin Pierce University, and and for the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art.

Scott has participated in many shows both on the national as well as the local level. His work is in the corporate collections of the Oak Brook Bank (Oak Brook, IL), the Essex Inn (downtown Chicago), the Schacknow Museum of Fine Arts (Plantation, FL), UMass Ambulatory Center (Worcester, MA) and Clinton Hospital (Clinton, MA). He has work in hundreds of private collections, ranging from Beverly Hills to Australia. In addition to The School Street Art Studios (Gardner, MA) where he maintains an active studio, Scott’s artwork is represented by The Boulder Art Gallery (Fitchburg, MA), Gallery Sitka (MA) and Collins Artworks (Clinton, MA). He resides in southwestern NH.

Artist’s Statement

Much of my abstract work deals with speed. Speed runs rampant throughout our society.  I react to this by taking a static surface (the substrate) and through the use of expressive, ardent, explosive brushwork and bold color, use it as a reflection of contemporary culture as well as the global communication network.

Images flash before us at an exhausting rate. We see things in such an abbreviated fashion. Using paint as a way to represent this fast-moving world is my challenge. I could use other mediums seemingly more suited to doing that, such as video. However, I choose to use paint as my medium because I believe it makes a different statement than the electronic media that we’re so accustomed to seeing and hearing.

A painting’s appeal in comparison to many other art forms is because it can be viewed on many levels, unlike video and other electronic media that are linear in their design and not that different visually from the everyday images that we are bombarded with via TV, computers, and movie screens. A painting can be seen all at once or viewed little by little — the viewer controls the pace. The viewer is empowered, for they are drawn into a dialogue with the piece at a pace and level that they desire. In that way, they are able draw the utmost meaning from it.