Into Deep Painting

Scott Idleman creates imaginary worlds inspired in part by real world phenomena including aerial views, microscopic imagery, astronomy, Americana quilts and patterns in nature in his paintings, drawings, and mixed media pieces. Trained as a graphic designer, Idleman wanted get back into the non-digital alchemy of paint, ink and texture. Mining his childhood obsession with doodling and mark-making, Idleman has developed a painting technique of colorizing gesso then drawing with it to build up texture that creates shadow and depth. Utilizing reductive simple dots, circles, dashes and line, the comprehensive theme of all Idleman’s artwork is connectivity. Because of technology, the world is more connected than ever before. His intent is to convey those flows, overlaps and missed connections. Idleman was born in Stamford, Connecticut in 1964. He attended Kansas City Art Institute where he received a B.F.A. in Graphic Design with minors in fibers, photography and painting. After five years in New York, Idleman settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1992 and resides in the SF Mission.