The Avett Brothers released their latest album, Closer Than Together, on October 4. Seth Avett writes, “We didn’t make a record that was meant to comment on the sociopolitical landscape that we live. We did, however, make an album that is obviously informed by what is happening now on a grander scale all around us…because we are a part of it and it is a part of us.” The brothers have been sharing their music, their thoughts and their faith with audiences for nearly two decades.Fatherhood (detail), 2013, oil on canvas, 106 x 65". Courtesy the artist, © 2019 Scott Avett. Photograph by Lydia Bittner-Baird.Scott Avett graduated from East Carolina University in 1999, and he has been printmaking and painting ever since—while writing music and touring with Seth and their band. Scott had kept his paintings pretty much to himself until a week after the release of Closer Than Together when an exhibition, Scott Avett: INVISIBLE, opened at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. It continues through February 2, 2020. It features his large-scale portraits of himself and his family as well as prints and work relating to the band.Motherhood (detail), 2012, oil on canvas, 106 x 65". Courtesy the artist, © 2019 Scott Avett. Photograph by Lydia Bittner-Baird.Linda Dougherty, the museum’s chief curator and curator of contemporary art, comments, “We’re always looking for new North Carolina artists who are under the radar. I did a studio visit with Scott in 2015. We just talked generally and the idea of an exhibition slowly evolved. He’s a perfect fit. The Avett Brothers performed here early in their career and Scott developed a connection to the collection when he was in school. Sentimental, nostalgic and deeply real—like his song lyrics—his paintings resonate with human emotion and forge powerful and personal connections between his work and the viewer/listener.

“He’s an extremely talented visual artist,” she adds. “His work can hold its own among his peers.”Scott Avett in his studio. Courtesy the artist, © 2019 Scott Avett. Photograph by Airtype Studio.“I’ve had freedom in the world of painting,” Scott explains, “because I’ve kept it to myself. The paintings are now public. The exhibition represents 15 to 20 years of work. I had anticipated it not affecting me, but it has.

“Everything I do is in conversation with my spiritual journey. There are easy moments and some are more a struggle. I don’t look too far for inspiration. I paint or write about what’s before me. It’s also about always being in the moment. It’s about presence,” he continues. “The time of Motherhood and Fatherhood paintings is changing. Our children are growing. Those moments are gone. But there are new moments. Our relations are a relationship with God and humanity and culture. They’re the best and closest version of world peace I know.”Color Wheel, 2014, linoleum block print, 45 x 43". Courtesy Betsy and Greg Blinn and the artist, © 2018 Scott Avett. Photograph by Lydia Bittner-Baird.Oscar Wilde wrote, “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” Scott knows that’s true. He mentions a portrait in the exhibition of his son eating. “A calm moment,” he recalls. “It was a little Scott/big Scott conversation. I saw myself in him. The painting is an homage to this little Scott who will never be again. I’m sending him off as he crosses a threshold into manhood.”Jump the Boy, 2017, silkscreen and acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36". Courtesy the artist, © 2019 Scott Avett. Photograph by Lydia Bittner-Baird.A reviewer in The New Yorker referred to the “extreme musical honesty” of the Avett Brothers. The extreme honesty is a family trait that is present in the group’s music, in Scott’s paintings and in conversation with him. His openness reflects his conviction.
“I have faith that my personal experiences are familiar, in some way, to all other humans,” says Scott. “In other words, that they connect.”

Early on he connected with the work of Caravaggio who painted realistic and emotional representations of the human condition around the turn of the 17th century. He is known primarily for his brilliant use of chiaroscuro with dramatic light and mysterious dark, and painting directly from life. “Both Caravaggio and Rembrandt have been massive influences. I’ve read probably five books on Caravaggio,” Scott explains. “They aroused my curiosity about how to render form on canvas.” He sometimes draws on the canvas with acrylic paint but more often starts right out painting with oil. He recalls that Caravaggio didn’t have preparatory drawings but went straight to painting on the canvas. “I get off on the contrast in his paintings,” Scott says.“I began wondering ‘What would happen if I mixed the darkness of chiaroscuro with the style of Andy Warhol?’ I’m not shut off to any artistic influence.”Daddy, 2016, oil on wood, 100 x 42". Courtesy the artist, © 2018 Scott Avett. Photograph by Lydia Bittner-Baird.Among his contemporaries, Eric Fischl has been “massively influential,” he says. “His interaction and affirmation have been a shot in the arm. I’m aiming for Eric’s fluidity.”

Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio produced and directed a film, May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers, for HBO. It reveals how the brothers create their songs and pull it all together for an album or a performance. It also reveals the close, nurturing relationship of family from the sermons of his minister grandfather who baptized him but who died the same year, through his parents and siblings to his wife and their three children—as well as the members of the band. The sense of belonging that can ameliorate struggles finds its way into Scott’s paintings.Black Mouse, White Mouse, 2010, oil on canvas, 106 x 65". Courtesy the artist, © 2019 Scott Avett. Photograph by Lydia Bittner-Baird.

Julianne in Vain, 2009, oil on canvas, 22 x 22". Courtesy the artist, © 2019 Scott Avett. Photograph by Lydia Bittner-Baird.“I get ideas and sometimes put them away for later,” Scott says. “I have thousands of fragments; some of them are great ideas. They have their own little beauty. I think of them as completed little works. Judd Apatow told me ‘Ideas are a dime a dozen.’ You have to put the work into it. There’s liberation in commitment,” he continues. “Even in marriage.”

Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, wrote that “future is a thought in your head. Beyond that, there’s no such thing as future.”

When I ask, “What next?”, Scott muses, “I’ll focus on music and do only that for a while. I’m feeling the next painting might be an object. My son likes fishing and lures. We saw some recently with mirrors. I couldn’t help but see them in a collage.” 

Scott Avett: INVISIBLE
When: Through February 2, 2020
Where: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, NC 27607
Information: (919) 839-6262, www.ncartmuseum.org 

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