Liquid Gold, 2002
R. Scott Pease (1954-)
About the artist:
Pease is a professional photographer based in Aurora, Ohio. In daily life, he documents landscapes, architectural exteriors and interiors, and other products for engineers, architects, designers, and other businesses. He graduated from Kent State University with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Photo Illustration and Commercial Photography and began his career working at American Greetings. Later he established his own commercial studio in Cleveland and began photographing on commission, “everything from architecture and food to people and products as well as heavy industrial equipment and landscapes." More recently he has earned licensure to operate an sUAV ("small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle"), i.e., a drone, and so now also does aerial photography, bringing to that category of image the same sensitivity to composition and color you can find in his landscapes, such as this image at Summa Health.
Where you can see more of this artist’s work:
Pease’s website displays both his commercial and his landscape photography, as well as linking to the blog in which he reflects on the processes involved in carrying out some of his commercial projects. He has worked around the U.S. to document public architecture for health care, higher education institutions, and sports programs, as well as domestic and landscape architecture, and major landscape renovations.
More about Liquid Gold
Liquid Gold, 2002
Materials: Digital photograph, Epson Premium Luster print, 20” x 30”
Location at Summa Health: Akron Campus, main building (141 N. Forge St.), gold neighborhood, ground floor near "E" elevators.
This work was acquired for the Summa Health System — Akron Campus Wayfinding Project.
About the art and artist
This digital photo of fallen cottonwood leaves, floating on what looks like molten metal, was taken in Zion National Park near Springdale, in Washington County, Utah. Photographer Scott Pease is drawn to these “wild places” in the landscape; they inspire him to tell stories with the images that he begins to create while out exploring and then completes with the aid of a computer.
The particular gold hue in this photograph, he tells us, came from the setting sun reflected down into a small pool of water along the “Narrows” of the Virgin River. The cottonwood leaves themselves have relinquished their fall gold and have now faded. Even so, on the liquid surface, they generate blue-black haloes that, trembling, create slender auras of movement we register as multiple contours. The leaf stems submerged in the water trace pale gold arcs, contrasting in their simplicity with the complex outlines of the curled and sometimes broken leaves. This landscape detail provides us with a meditative focus: The artist organizes forms within the composition by selective framing and sensitive adjustment of features such as hue and saturation in order to represent his original vision.
More about Low Tide Sunrise at Brandon Beach Oregon
Low Tide (Sunrise at Brandon Beach, Oregon) 2014
Materials: Digital photograph, printed on acrylic, 48" x 36"
Location at Summa: Juve Family Behavioral Health Pavilion, second floor, southwest hallway, on wall between offices P3 and P4.
About the art and artist:
The spectacular scenery of the Oregon Coast offers vistas with sometimes desolate but beautiful combinations of rock, sea and sky, as in this digital photograph. Printed on metallic paper which underscores sheen and texture, the reflections of ragged clouds in the mirror-like pools at low tide resonate with the craggy rocks stranded along the beaches.
Artist R. Scott Pease has waited for the right moment to contrast the reflecting pools with the sand, which appeals to our sense of touch as almost velvety. These textures are irresistible, set off by the sometimes-deep blue of the sky and the bright orange face of that rock, left-center, that catches the first rays of the rising sun, off-stage on our right. We have to orient ourselves in space to make sense of what we see in relation to the title Pease has given this photo, and that sense of orientation grounds us, like the foreground rock, in a world where nature changes with every tide.
More about Poplar Leaves on Water
Poplar Leaves on Water (Zion National Park, Utah), 2014
Materials: Digital photograph, printed on acrylic, 48" x 36"
Location at Summa: Juve Family Behavioral Health Pavilion, end of north hallway on second floor south.
About the art and artist:
We have to look carefully at this digital image in order to distinguish the poplar leaves of the title from other imposing shapes and colors. Printed on acrylic, the image enhances the metallic, molten-looking shapes that turn out to be the negative spaces between leaves or small pools of water that accumulate on top of them. The very satisfying contrast of deep watery blue and shimmering shades of yellow gold create an abstract surface pattern that we can most readily appreciate if we squint just a bit at the image ("though its substantial dimensions make that even harder).
The poplar leaves of the title are not the first things that strike the beholder, but in their desiccated flattened shapes, we intuit the foliage, the trees, the landscapes from which they came to this watery end. Their yellow and brown surfaces, subtly contrasted with the almost-white and slightly raised veins no longer functioning, and especially their assertively saw-toothed edges, offer a kind of reality test for the more abstracted shapes - probably enhanced by the photographer in post-production -- of the water which they hold and in which they float.
The contrast of natural -- the leaves -- and the abstract -- the negative spaces and pools of water -- has interested R. Scott Pease to the extent that he has enlarged the forms here into a substantial statement. We are drawn to the suggestion of molten gold edging the natural forms, as well as the places where recognizable elements -- the contour of a leaf or a stem seen just below the surface -- assert themselves.
This genre of work -- not really a still life but also not a landscape, somewhere in between and also portrait-like, using natural forms and playing with them to create new configurations -- emerges in the work of a number of Summa Collection artists. Such a genre focuses the beholder's attention and distills the image into a series of contemplative stages that titles, as in this case, further specify (here, Utah's Zion National Park, so that we have the option of imagining our experience situated in a specific place, and even a specific time (of year).
Sunset over the Allegheny Plateau
Sunset over the Allegheny Plateau, 2019
Materials: Digital photograph, printed on acrylic, 40" x 60"
Location at Summa: Juve Family Behavioral Health Pavilion, second floor north, middle hallway, outside office P10
About the art and artist:
The Allegheny mountains have inspired many atmospheric photos that celebrate their worn slopes receding into pictorial space. Here R. Scott Pease composes his shot to step from the foreground via a series of inclines that converge back to the plateau of the title. That plateau is also the horizontal center of the image. Beyond it we vaguely discern another range of the Alleghenies, very faint, and then, much more dramatic, a great pile-up of cloud, somewhat overshadowing with its steep masses the gentler slopes of the mountains themselves.
This is all framed in the foreground corners by the near-black silhouettes of foliage, to give us some scale. Pease renounces a more "touristy" moment of vivid sunset in favor of muted pinks and oranges in the sky, the last vestige of that day's solar journey over the eastern range, creating a meditative, peaceful mood.
While the flanking trees tend to prevent us from feeling invited to enter this vista, we do find deep calm as we contemplate the repeated forms and graded monochrome of this digital photograph.