The Unknowable is a Force That Shapes Reality
July 8, 2025
The Comfort of Filling Gaps In my recent work, I’ve been grappling with what it means to paint omission. It’s easy to think of omission
These essays are where I think in public about painting, perception, and the post-certainty era. They grow out of my studio work and out of Structural Omission, the framework I developed to hold the limits of observation, perception, and knowing inside realist and representational painting.
To cut straight to the theory start with one of these:
• Realism in the Age of AI: How Structural Omission Grounds Representational Painting in Perceptual Limits
• Structural Omission: A Framework for Representational Painting in the Post-Certainty Era
• The Artist Doesn’t Know: Epistemological Limits of Representation
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What I’m Taking With Me – NYC, June 2025
June 25, 2025
I came to New York to engage. I came for connection, for clarity. I didn’t chase events; I managed energy with precision. There’s a particular
Progress Report from the Woods – Byrdcliffe
June 12, 2025
Day 18 of 26 at Byrdcliffe.Three large paintings done. A fourth is nearly finished. Several successful experiments in disrupted realism and one small chipmunk who
New Work in Progress: Byrdcliffe Artist Residency, Week One
May 31, 2025
I’m currently in residence at the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony in Woodstock, NY, where I’m developing a new series of paintings grounded in my framework of
The Second Painting’s Already Pushing Back
May 31, 2025
One week in. One painting finished. The second is already pushing back. This is the good kind of resistance. The kind that tells me I’m
Post-Certainty: Structural Omission in Contemporary Art
May 17, 2025
Post-Certainty in Cultural Context We’re living in a time that performs certainty at every turn—answers delivered instantly, confidence faked at scale. But the ground has
What I Mean by Post-Certainty
May 17, 2025
“Post-certainty” doesn’t mean we’ve given up on truth. It means we’ve stopped pretending that truth arrives as a complete picture. In a post-certainty world, we
Post-Certainty: Painting in the Age of AI
May 17, 2025
Title: Post-Certainty: Painting in the Age of AI by Deborah Scott Author’s Note: This essay introduces a central argument behind both my painting practice and
Structural Omission in Painting: What Can’t Be Known Still Belongs in the Frame
May 15, 2025
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
What I Mean by Structural in Structural Omission
May 15, 2025
The more I write about Structural Omission, the more I realize there’s a risk of misreading the word structural. It can sound like filler. A hand-wave. A