Ventura Artist Paints on Wild Side

Years spent wandering the golden savannas and lush watering holes of Africa have left world-renowned wildlife artist Lindsay Scott with some sharp opinions about animals.

The Ventura artist admires elephants for being in touch with their emotions. She frowns upon reptiles, which remind her of the cobras that once slithered through her frontyard. And wart hogs may stink, snort and sport unruly tails, but deep down, she says, they are “very endearing.”

Scott, 46, brings a biologist’s eye for anatomical detail and a poet’s love of nature to her work. Her paintings go beyond mere illustration, she says, capturing a spirit, a mood and a moment in time.

And they sell for up to $70,000 each.

One gallery holds an annual Lindsay Scott show, where collectors attend a private dinner with the outspoken, good-humored artist.

No one is more surprised by her success than Scott, who started painting in 1990, figuring she could make a few bucks, but not a living.

“I did my first painting of elephants crossing a river in Kenya,” she said. “I sold it for $1,000 and was delighted that someone would buy it.”

More than a decade later she acknowledges doing “pretty bloody well.”

Scott’s ability to depict animals extends to their postures, the plant life around them and the time of day portrayed. She travels often to Botswana, Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe to observe animals in the wild. On an African trip last month, she painted a lion sitting near an old airstrip.

“You need to know what you are painting because people who know animals can tell,” she said. “You need to know the anatomy, if the animals would stand this way or be here at this time of day. Just like photographs lie, paintings can lie.”

Scott was born in rural Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, a wild, arid place where leopards occasionally roamed the yard.

It was a fitting start to a life spent studying, drawing and eventually painting the animals of Africa.

Scott began drawing as a child, later studying fine arts, biology and botany at college in Cape Town, South Africa.

She then led expeditions in Africa, Antarctica and Australia as a research biologist and studied bird behavior for the National Geographic Society. Scott was also curator of ornithology and paleobotany at the Museum of Natural History in Cape Town.

In 1980, after marrying a National Geographic photographer, she moved to Sedona, Ariz., a place she said had the “feel of Africa.”

After divorcing, she spent a year in the Virgin Islands, where she taught herself to paint. She soon discovered a world of people who collected wildlife art and appreciated her attention to detail.

Her work now hangs in galleries and museums, large and small, throughout the world.

At the Mockingbird Gallery in Bend, Ore., owner Pamela Claflin puts on a Lindsay Scott show every July, attracting more than 500 people from around the country.

“There are a lot of African wildlife artists, but people will say she really feels the animals,” Claflin said. “There is a rightness and believability about the work.”

Scott came to Ventura 16 years ago and met and married Brian McPhun, a goldsmith originally from New Zealand.

Donna Granata, a Ventura County arts educator, has produced a documentary on Scott scheduled for broadcast on local cable stations in December. She said trying to fit such an expansive life into 30 minutes was a monumental effort.

“Lindsay was laughed at in Santa Fe and told her artwork would never amount to anything . . . because African art was passe,” Granata said. “Now she is one of the top women wildlife artists in the world.”

The reason, said Granata, is that Scott has mastered realism.

“Everything you see in her paintings is realistic. She won’t put an animal in a painting or a tree in an ecosystem that doesn’t belong there,” she said.

Scott’s house, which overlooks the ocean in midtown Ventura, is overflowing with books on African animals and history. Spears and clubs from the Masai tribe are in one corner, old gourds, rattles and woven baskets in another.

And everywhere there are animals.

A giant bull elephant splashing through a blue river is captured on oil and linen in the living room. A painting of a leopard stands like a sentry near a bookcase, and in the master bedroom a herd of partially painted zebras slowly gathers on the canvas.

Scott’s favorite animal to paint is the zebra because of its stripes and the way it fits into the scenery, but her true love is the elephant.

“If you know elephants, you can tell what they are thinking,” she said. “They are not ‘poker faces’; they let you know what they are thinking. Their kids get out and play. They have very strong family bonds.”

Working in Africa has its hazards. On her last trip, Scott was stalked by a lioness while in an outhouse.

“She was staring right at me,” she recalled, her blue eyes widening.

Another female lion roared a few feet behind her husband as he walked around the camp.

“I levitated,” he said.

But returning to Africa is vital to her.

“I absolutely have to go back to Africa to recharge my batteries,” she said. “I need to express a feeling in my paintings, and I need to go back to get it.”