ARTIST STATEMENT (Summer 2024)
My work is comprised of vivid, graphic drawings on paper ranging in size from 8“ x 10“ to 5‘ x 10‘ using pen and ink, watercolor and gouache. Each series begins with a depiction of an object or interior and develops as a sense of play takes over where each successive piece is pushed and pulled in different directions as a form of learning through experimentation. The result is often humorous, oddly familiar, and sometimes disturbing.
My botanical series explores the interplay between order and chaos, mutation and evolution. I depict fantastical flowers set against backgrounds that use a system of grids as a framework. Established order is broken allowing for unpredictable results to emerge. The tension between the rigid grid and the organic, mutated flowers invites the viewer to contemplate the balance between the planned and the spontaneous. By layering these mutated flowers over the systematically created backgrounds, parallels between the creative process and the mechanisms of evolutionary adaptation emerge.
My meticulously rendered, labyrinthine architectural drawings offer an invitation for viewers to navigate on their own playful terms. In this series, which began in the early 1990’s, I’ve attempted to merge the tight boundaries of isometric composition with the personality that inhabits the space. More recently I’ve tried to stretch the margins further by incorporating impossible elements reminiscent of Oscar Reutersvärd, MC Echer, Roger Penrose.
My crash drawings start with news photos: explosions, crashes and accidents which I collage together. I then use the collage as a reference to make line drawings. Those line drawings are again collaged together several more times in order to complete a final drawing.
Drawing at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens in Spring, 2017. Photo by William Teplin
BIOGRAPHY
Scott Teplin had a fun but restless youth in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While he largely avoided art classes, he began to shape his creative identity early on through other boundary testing endeavors like making fireworks and sewing his own eccentric outfits. These early playful, imaginative, and often risky pursuits continue to inform his work today.
Discovering the medium of watercolor as a viewer and emerging artist during a year of study in Europe was transformative for Tepin. The challenge of capturing a viewer's attention and drawing them into his imagination through this capricious medium was immediately exciting to him. This set him on a path that gained footing through a BS at University of Wisconsin, Madison and an MFA in printmaking at University of Washington.
Teplin has exhibited world-wide in Museums and commercial galleries since 1998. His work is included in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art (NY and SF), The New Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Spencer Art Museum, Walker Art Center, Smithsonian Institution, Altoids Collection, New York Public Library, Phoenix Public Library, MIT, University of Virginia, Cornell University, Harvard University, Yale University, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, Wesleyan University, Stanford University, The California College of Arts and Crafts, University of Iowa, Occidental College, Johns Hopkins Children's Hospital, Turku University Hospital - Finland, Penn and Teller, and Progressive Insurance
Working in his EFA studio, 2016
The backbone to Teplin's work lies within his sketchbooks, of which he is so particular that he hand-binds each one, from scratch.
What Someone Once Said
Scott Teplin’s artwork stimulates the brain and excites the eye by merging a variety of dimensional Nature-Physical concepts with humor and masterful manipulation of media. His fascination with biodiversity and relationships of seemingly disparate natural subjects can be found in several of his series, such as his botanical and internal organ watercolors where similarities between botany and bilious organs become comically intertwined. He is always dissecting his subjects on paper as he asks, “What’s inside?” His insatiable curiosity comes through with roofless architectural drawings where the viewer gets completely lost inside impossibly detailed structures. His masterful use of line and color through his practiced use of traditional pen & ink and watercolor turns what could have been grotesque into beautifully considered and often hilarious compositions.
Wisconsin, 1978 - never happier
