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Artist Scott Gustafson is fascinated by the English words used to describe groups of particular animals, such as, a pride of lions or a pod of whales. But there is also a wisp of snipes, a clutter of spiders and two of his favorites, a skulk of foxes and a parliament of owls. (The latter inspired a recent painting and Greenwich Workshop Fine Art Smallworks™ Canvas of the same name.)
“In that vein,” said the artist, “I wondered what a gathering of dragons might be called. Finding no name already given it seemed that a linguistic gauntlet had been thrown my way. Rifling both mind and dictionary I happened to stumble upon a wonderful word; confabulate, whose Webster definition is 1) ‘To talk informally; to chat. 2) To replace fact with fantasy in memory.’ As Thoreau once said, ‘There was pasture enough for my imagination’ and 'A Confabulation of Dragons' was born.”
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Storytelling through pictures has always held a certain fascination for Scott
Gustafson; be they the moving images in animated cartoons, or the epic
illustrations of N. C. Wyeth. Upon entering the Chicago Academy of Fine Art,
Scott was 99% sure that he wanted to become an animator, but it was that 1%
that ultimately drew him more and more into the world of stretched canvas and
oil paint. "As an animator, "Gustafson says, "your contribution to a given
film is, by necessity, limited to whatever character you've been assigned. But
as an illustrator, you're responsible for locations, sets, costumes, props,
lighting and character designs, not to mention the overall mood and emotion of
a given painting. It's about the best job there is."
Over the nearly twenty-five years that span his career, he has had the
opportunity to fulfill commissions for a number of varied clients and
publishers such as Celestial Seasonings, Playboy magazine, Saturday Evening
Post, The Bradford Exchange, DreamWorks and The Greenwich Workshop. His
illustrated books include The Night Before Christmas, Peter Pan, Nutcracker,
as well as two original titles, Animal Orchestra and Alphabet Soup. His newest
release, Classic Fairy Tales, was recently awarded a Chesley award for best
interior book illustrations from the Association of Science Fiction and
Fantasy Artists and is currently in its third printing.
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