What Can’t Be Known Still Belongs in the Frame
Some stories aren’t told—they’re constructed around what’s missing. That’s the space I paint from. Whether or not you’ve read my writing, if you’ve stood in front of one of my paintings and sensed something unresolved, you’ve already encountered the logic behind them: **Structural Omission**.
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We’re Addicted to Clarity—But It’s Not Always Honest
We’re conditioned to look for coherence, to believe that if something is rendered clearly enough, it can be understood. But I don’t believe that’s true—not in painting, not in people.
In my work, realism doesn’t explain—it fractures. Likeness alone isn’t enough. What looks like resolution is often a visual lie. And what isn’t shown is just as constructed, just as deliberate.
This is the foundation of what I call **Structural Omission**—a framework I coined to describe the way my paintings are built around the limits of perception and narrative.
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The Absences Are Composed—Not Accidental
The interruptions in my work—the red marks, unpainted voids, surface fractures—aren’t added on. They’re compositional choices.
They are not ambiguity for ambiguity’s sake. They are the formal way I acknowledge the parts of a subject, a story, a self that can’t be pinned down or fully revealed.
I’m not rejecting realism. I’m reconfiguring it.
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Why I Paint This Way
I don’t believe the painter’s job is to complete the story. It’s to show what happens when we stop pretending that’s possible. **Structural Omission** gives me a way to hold space for what’s incomplete—without apologizing for it, and without forcing closure.
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Read More on Structural Omission
If this resonates, you can read my full essay here:
➡️ [**What I Mean by Structural Omission**](https://deborahscottart.substack.com/p/what-i-mean-by-structural-omission)
Or subscribe to my Substack, *The Full Story Doesn’t Exist*, where I explore these ideas through essays, painting fragments, and notes from my residencies.
➡️ [**Subscribe here**](https://deborahscottart.substack.com)
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*Deborah Scott is a figurative painter and writer. Her work explores the tension between representation, narrative, and the unknowable—what she defines as Structural Omission.*
