Take a look at Los Angeles-based artist Scott Belcastro's paintings and you'll feel a calmness come over you. Inspired by the woodlands of New York's upstate region, where he grew up, Belcastro tell stories of silence, loneliness and a struggle for something within ourselves. Using nature as his backdrop, Belcastro makes us long for a simpler life, doesn't he? “I love being at the point I'm at, age-wise. So I guess the thought of being young again does not cross my mind that much these days, these years. The only time I get to feel that is when I paint these landscapes, these sunrises and sunsets. I think about looking out the window at the snow falling in the dark backyard, or the sun beating down on the grass on a hot summer afternoon. Sleeping with the window open to feel the warm air hit you while you sleep. Good thoughts, things that still happen now but thinking back on them they seem more surreal, and more intense. I have no great philosophy or hardly the means to hold a conversation with someone without stumbling over my words or sounding like I flunked fifth grade english. I use these paintings to hold me up when I am full of words but can't say one of them out loud. I use these paintings to keep a moment or moments that I have felt in my life to linger there and kind of say remember this? I use little or no reference when I paint, and even if I have some pictures of nature hanging up I usually forget they are there five minutes into it. I sit in front of a big glass window overlooking beautiful mountains and sky, I look out the window when I am done working . My view of the world comes from inside of me, everything exterior is almost fantasy to me . These landscapes are real places because I make them real to you and me. Without bringing them to life we would never get to communicate like this. There would be a great silence in my life.”
“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs. And maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.” – Scott Belcastro Scott Belcastro
