Scotty, artist

Like a familiar elf, Jubilee and I sometime run into Scotty on our Missouri River walks. Oftentimes he is the only other person we see.

My gaze is usually toward the river. I love the way it swirls and dances and flows. Scotty, though, looks mostly at the trees and vines. I know what the river looks like, he says, but I have to study the way these trees go together.

He’s been an artist all his life. As a child the teachers mostly let him do what he wanted to do, he says, because he liked art so much. Then he worked at a big company doing “three dimensions: display”.

We talk about a lot of things, but mostly how things look. He let me take a photo of one of his pictures.