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
Before it was a painting, before it was a theory, structural omission began with a chart. Not a composition sketch. A two-by-two matrix used in psychology and
What I Mean by Structural Omission by Deborah Scott I originated Structural Omission to name a framework in realist painting where incompleteness is constitutive, not
Beyond the Gap: Structural Omission vs. Deliberate Omission in Art and Writing by Deborah Scott In both visual art and literature, omission has long
I originated Structural Omission to name the central argument behind both my painting practice and this Substack: The Full Story Doesn’t Exist. I have always
Welcome—I’m Deborah Scott. I’m a painter whose work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the U.S. and internationally. I write about what happens
The Stories That Refuse to Explain Themselves “The most powerful stories are the ones we don’t fully understand.” — Deborah Scott There’s something unsettling about
Why Paying Attention is the Boldest Artistic Act Akira Kurosawa once said, “The role of the artist is to not look away.” If that doesn’t
It must be true since I learned this week that three of my paintings are finalists for The Almenara Art Prize and have been included
