Paul Scott Gallery | 1/23-2/8 | Scottsdale, AZ

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Spencer Simmons reveals the beauty that can be found in our own backyards

For Spencer Simmons, 2018 was a milestone year. Only 24 at the time and a few years after earning a fine art degree from Arizona State University, Simmons won the Donald Jurney Traveling Fellowship which enabled him to paint and study in Europe for several months.

Tender Things, oil on panel, 40 x 30"

“It was an absolute dream,” says Simmons. “I was all of a sudden able to spend a significant time without any obligations other than painting, and seeing masterworks all over Europe…It was profound in the sense that I was starting to feel some validation in the path that I’d chosen, and it really set me on the path to becoming a professional painter.”

Upon his return to Phoenix, Simmons also found gallery representation close to home at Scottsdale’s Paul Scott Gallery, which is hosting Simmons’ first solo show, Revealed,from January 23 through February 8.

Nurtured, oil on panel, 66 x 43"

Although Europe, and especially Florence, Italy, continue to summon Simmons and his wife for extended sojourns, the subject matter he is most compelled to paint can be found right in his backyard—or not too far afield.

“Being born and raised in Arizona, it would feel very inauthentic to drive somewhere else to paint,” says Simmons. “So I look at the joy of man’s interaction with nature, even if it’s crumbling [or in a state of decay]. I’m not looking for a scenic thing. I’m much more interested in refining my palate like with wine or bitter drinks, and finding the beauty in the mundane. And the more you practice looking for the intriguing [in the ordinary], the more you find it.”

Many of Simmons’ paintings are rooted in his mother’s garden, which is adjacent to his studio at the house he grew up in. Simmons paints solely from observation and his imagination, without any reference material. Memories of Spring features one of his mother’s sunflowers long past its prime; while Springtime in her Gardenfeatures her Lady Banks’ roses in full bloom. “They’re all a portrait of her in some weird way,” says Simmons. “I’m pretty much interested in being a quiet observer of my world and looking at the maternal thread that runs through the landscape that surrounds me, whether that’s in my childhood backyard or a canal where I learned to ride my bicycle. I look to nature much like I look to my mother in times of need and comfort to nurse me back to health.”

Memories of Spring, oil on linen, 36 x 24"

In an another intimate piece titled Tender Things, Simmons has captured a menagerie of objects on a table, like a haphazard shrine, before a window. The unstaged scene is also inside his childhood home. Phoenix’s iconic Camelback Mountain can be glimpsed through the shutters, which look out toward his father’s house, just down the road. “It’s literally my whole world,” he says.

A couple years back, in an effort to bring more narrative into his work, Simmons began introducing figures. He began Nurtureearly on in the Covid-19 pandemic. A woman—modeled after his wife—reaches toward a fruit tree in a walled desert garden. Like many artists, he was painting in his studio everyday and feeling pretty isolated. “An apple tree growing in the desert is pretty absurd, but I had this idea of the Garden of Eden and this paradise I had in the backyard,” he says. “I wanted there to be this feeling that it’s isolated here but there is something out there. I wanted it to be allegorical, but not over do it and try to make it more splendid because it already is splendid.”