About:

Scott Brian Hewson is a Northwest artist based in Poulsbo, Washington, holding a BFA from Western Washington University and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Raised on Hood Canal, his early years immersed in the natural world of the Pacific Northwest left a lasting mark — one that continues to inform his deep affinity for nature and its presence in his work. His artistic journey has not been a linear one — after completing his formal training, Hewson stepped away from his studio practice for several years as the demands of building a new family took precedence. But as life grew harder and more complicated, he found himself drawn back to artmaking as a way to navigate its weight. The illnesses of his wife and child transformed art making and drawing in particular, into something essential — a coping mechanism, a private journal kept in stolen moments, a way to connect with a beautiful world in his mind that didn’t always feel beautiful in the realities of the day to day. He drew before nodding off to bed at night, in coffee shops, at parks while his kids played, and beside his wife during her long chemotherapy infusion appointments. That quiet, persistent urgency never left him, it informed his works moving forward.

At the heart of Hewson's work lies a concept both ancient and viscerally personal: horror vacui — the fear of empty space, the compulsion to fill every void. In nature, this impulse is everywhere, life colonizing every available surface, roots splitting stone, moss consuming shadow, cells dividing and spreading into the spaces a body leaves unguarded. Cancer, too, is a kind of horror vacui — relentless, opportunistic, filling what it finds. Living alongside that reality, Hewson found his own response in kind. The drawn line became a way of reclaiming space, of filling the silence that illness and fear leave behind. His densely worked surfaces — layered, restless, alive with mark-making — reflect both the abundance of the natural world he grew up in and the urgent need to cover the page, to leave no corner untouched, to assert presence against the void.

Statement:

My paintings and drawings move between observation and abstraction, using form, line, color, and surface to explore the emotional life of imagery. The work often feels suspended between recognition and interpretation, where figures, spaces, and marks are reassembled into something intimate, poetic, and slightly unsettled.

Rather than simply describing the visible world, I transform it. In building images that hold tension between clarity and ambiguity, I invite the viewer to linger in the space where memory, perception, and imagination overlap. The result is work that feels both grounded and elusive, familiar yet hard to fully pin down.

scottbrianhewson@gmail.com

https://www.instagram.com/scottbrianhewsonart/

VITAE:

Selected Exhibitions

“Special Delivery” Blue Horse Gallery/ Works Gallery, Bellingham, Washington, 2005

“Department of Art Scholarship Exhibition, B Gallery”, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, 2005

“Repetition, B Gallery”, Bellingham, Washington, 2005

“Emerging Talent”, Hand to Mouth Gallery Bellingham, Washington, 2006

“In Between”, Nightlight Lounge, Portland, Oregon, 2010

“Pulp & Pigment, PDX Pop Up” Hellion Gallery, San Diego, California, 2010

AMP/Hellion Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, 2011

“Out of the Frame”, Mullowney Print, San Francisco, California, 2014

"Printmakers"show, Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica, California, 2015

Edmonds Art Festival, Edmonds WA, 2022

Edmonds Art Festival, Edmonds WA, 2024

18th annual CVG juried Show, Bremerton, WA 2025

Edmonds Art Festival, Edmonds WA, 2025

Awards:

“First place”, Drawing category, Edmonds Art Festival 2022