Death of a great artist!

This morning, after a 2 year fight with cancer, Roman Paul Scott finally had to give in to the dreaded disease. He fought long and hard and showed a rare will to live. After the initial surgery that successfully removed the original tumor, he was looking forward to living a long and happy life with his wife, Heidi. The happiness did, however, not last long. The doctors soon found out that the cancer had spread. He then underwent more surgeries only for the doctors to discover that the spreading was more extensive than initially thought. He also went through chemo thinking it would help. Three months after finishing the chemotherapy, he traveled to Las Vegas to celebrate Christmas with his father. It turned out to be an agonising Christmas vacation!
Soon after returning home after the Christmas vacation, he was admitted to the hospital only to be released after a few days. During the following weekend it became abundantly clear that he needed to be in the hospital.The doctors performed an ileostomi on the right side of the bowel in order to relieve the one he had that was blocked by the tumours . When they were performing the surgery they found that Romans intestines were completely blocked by metastases. Roman got the death message and was transferred into palliative care and sent home. Basically to die!
As soon as Roman was able to come home, the people around him noticed a immense change in him. It seemed like being able to return to his own environment, gave him a new found will to live. He thrived at home. There wasn't a day that he didn't walk up the stairs to the second story to sit up there and paint or draw. He did among other things finish a deck of Tarot Cards that he had started while he was in the hospital. He has documented these cards meticulously here on this blog.
When the weather got warmer, he started walking down through the basement and out on the deck behind the house to sit outside and work.
Around the 14th or 15th of May his pain had increased so much that he was in agony most of the time. He was constantly giving himself morphine from the pain-pump and in the end we all noticed that the morphine had no effect any longer. Once again he ended up in the hospital. After a few days in surgical gastro ward he was transferred to the palliative ward where they could operate in a spinal catheter.
After adjusting this pump it was clear that it only took care of some of the pain, namely the pain in his stomach while the added groin pain he had been experiencing the last several weeks, did not disappear when using the pump.
These last three weeks Roman has suffered tremendeous pain. It.. has been extremely hard to take care of him as he has been very sensitive to touch. The last few days he has experienced terrible pains and has lost more and more touch with reality as each day has progressed. Finally yesterday morning he wrapped his arms around his wife and kissed her twice on the lips and slipped into an unresponsive state of mind. Getting more and more unresponsive he finally drew his last breath at 3.43 on Friday morning on the 12th of June. It was good to see him finally be able to let go!

Roman Scott decided in January that he wanted his body to be donated to science.

A memorial exhibition will be arranged come fall.

Roman Scott was highly loved, and will be deeply missed!!

Rest in Peace Mr. Roman Scott!!

Showing paintings at IST Asker

Painting a Wall Street commission.

Making an igloo! (back in 2009)

Home for the weekend! During the dreaded summer of 2013, spent doing radiation treatment in Oslo.

                                                     Summer vacation 2008, Ilwaco WA.

Painting in the basement.

Product of our Wyoming roadtrip back in 2010.

On the East Coast, 2010

Soda Fever

I'm still waiting on the deck of 62 cards to be printed,  but that doesn't stop me from making more cards.
This one is inspired by my new passion for different flavours of sodas and juices. Since I am unable to eat, drinking unusual and familiar flavours has become very important. Some drinks bring me back to my past (such as root beer), while I discover other drinks, such as a German Peruvian Matte Ice tea with carbonation--very stimulating. I buy a lot of these at stores called Asia mat, which offer foods not usually sold in Norway.  Some Norwegian chain stores, too, offer a wide variety of drinks as well. Prices are high by  US standards, but I treat them as special things to be collected and savoured--much as this dream prospector must do, quenching his thirst in the desert.

Cover card

This is the cover image for the deck of 60 cards soon to be printed. At the bottom is the field for my signature and numbering of the limited edition.

Under the Pavilion

30x40, ink and water-colour, 2015

I have taken a break from the Tarot card project the last few days. I am getting a limited edition printed. The edition will feature 60 different cards.

In the mean time I have been enjoying some spring weather from our deck, where we recently set up a patio or pavilion tent. This is a view from it, looking at the back yards and river of Herre.

Glyph Party, Survivalist Hermit

Glyph Party is inspired by the glyphs of the ancient Maya, one of the most interesting pictographic languages. When looking at Mayan glyphs I am often struck by their immediacy; they sometimes seem contemporary, with a cartoony aesthetic. Other ancient hieroglyphs don't have this same feel--they are more stiff and formal. My rendition of glyphs celebrates a zany or informal feeling.

Survivalist Hermit is partially inspired by the classical Chinese genre of monk and hermit paintings. It is also a response to the rugged individualist notion that survivalists have about themselves. The card is tongue-in-cheek, mixing Buddhist otherworldliness with materialist paranoia.

Great Grandma, Sun Dial Room

Great Grandma is from an early 1940s photo shot probably in Gillette, Wyoming. To pose in front of the car was very common at the time--it seems that all my ancestors were doing it.

Sun Dial Room comes from the increasing importance that weather, the seasons, and especially the sun plays in my life. I am more or less confined to my house, so I am always positioning myself to absorb sun rays through windows.  This card is an architectural or engineering fantasy involving a piece of furniture turning into a mobile railroad car on a circular rail, a kind of clock.

Naked Granpa, Family Tree

Naked Granpa is painted from a small, off-center Polaroid taken in the early 1970s. My grandfather is bathing in a lake near Como Bluff, Wyoming, where the family would often camp in the summer. The scene is idyllic and nostalgic, showing a farmer's tan and a tenderness. This prairie lake was a very special spot, an oasis in the high desert. In the decades since, cattle ranching has fouled this lake, so it exists only in memory and art.

Family Tree is a fun fantasy about family lineage and the unpredictability of decedents. Family trees tend to be documents of reverence, so I enjoyed turning it into a comical scene.