Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott

Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH October 10, 2025 – January 4, 2026

Cincinnati Art Museum
Cincinnati, OH

October 10, 2025 – January 4, 2026

Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott: Paul Scott’s New American Scenery at the Cincinnati Art Museum will open at its 8th tour location on October 10th, 2025. “PAUL SCOTT: Viewing America” marks the artist’s sixth solo show in the US, spanning 2019 to 2026. 

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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

At first glance, artist Paul Scott’s transfer-printed tableware* may look familiar—like something you have seen in your grandparents’ china cabinet or a second-hand shop. Look closer and you will notice subtle differences that add up to a powerful narrative shift. Scott (British, b. 1953) subverts this seemingly unassuming blue-and-white “cultural wallpaper” to create sharp, thought-provoking social commentary. Working with new ceramic forms or repurposing antique pieces, Scott breaks, reassembles, erases, and adds details using screenprinting, engraving, and collage processes to create new “historical” patterns. Broadly, his works address updated narratives about art, history and American experiences.

During a visit to Ohio State University in 1999, Scott encountered a new genre of historical blue-and-white transferware. Beginning in the mid-1800s, manufacturers in Staffordshire, England, produced these objects specifically for American collectors. Long familiar with British transfer-printed ceramics, Scott knew little about those made for export—wares that memorialized certain American figures, landscapes, architecture, industries, and historical events. Since then, Scott has become one of a long line of travelers and observers who have visited and then written about or depicted this country, offering an outsider’s perspective. To this end, the artist’s New American Scenery series reflects his personal experiences of being and traveling in America, and, in his words, the need to “rebalance the narrative with something more contemporary and inclusive.”

Ripe for reframing and responding, the museum’s American art collections will serve as a springboard for Scott to present existing and new works, inviting various perspectives and initiating conversations about our shared American experience.

*Transfer-printed ware, or transferware, describes industrially produced ceramic tableware that has a decorative pattern applied by transferring a print first from an engraved copper plate to special paper and finally to the ceramic’s surface. This term also applies to modern wares with printed graphic surfaces made using more recent printmaking techniques and decal transfer technologies.

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Paul Scott, "Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), New American Scenery, Angola 3" 2019, in-glaze screen print (decal) on salvaged Syracuse China with pearlware glaze, 11 x 11 x 1". draws reference to three Black inmates in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in the 1970s—Robert King, Herman Wallace, and Albert Woodfox—who were held in solitary confinement for the longest period in American history. It is suspected that this unethical treatment was retaliation for the inmates’ connection to the Black Panther Party. In 2001, King’s conviction was overturned and he was released. In 2013, Amnesty International called for the release of 71-year-old Wallace, who was released in October of that year and, soon after, died of liver cancer. In 2014, Woodfox’s conviction was overturned by the US Court of Appeals and he was released in 2016.

ABOUT PAUL SCOTT

English, b. 1953, Darley Dale, Derbyshire, England
lives and works in Cumbria, UK

Paul Scott is a Cumbrian-based artist with a diverse practice and an international reputation. Creating individual pieces that blur the boundaries between fine art, craft and design, he is well known for research into printed vitreous surfaces, as well as his characteristic blue and white artworks in glazed ceramic.

Scott’s artworks can be found in public collections around the globe – including The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Norway, the Victoria and Albert Museum London, National Museums Liverpool, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh and Brooklyn Art Museum USA. Commissioned work can be found in a number of UK museums as well as public places in the North of England, including Carlisle, Maryport, Gateshead and Newcastle Upon Tyne. He has also completed large-scale works in Hanoi, Vietnam and GuldagergĂ„rd public sculpture park in Denmark.

A combination of rigorous research, studio practice, curation, writing and commissioned work ensures that his work is continually developing. It is fundamentally concerned with the re-animation of familiar objects, landscape, pattern and a sense of place. He was Professor of Ceramics at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) from 2011–2018. Scott received his Bachelors of Art Education and Design at Saint Martin’s College and Ph.d at the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design in Manchester, England.

His current research project New American Scenery has been enabled by an Alturas Foundation artist award, Ferrin Contemporary, and funding from Arts Council England. More on New American Scenery, here.

Paul Scott, Artist Portrait, 2022

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Additional works may be available to acquire, but not listed here.

If interested in lists of all works and series: Send us a message