If you had to classify the paintings of Scott Saw I guess you could put the California-based artist in the lowbrow art or pop surrealism categories, with strange and surreal subject matter that’s not ashamed to borrow from pop culture, not like any of us really have a chance to choose whether we are influenced by or use such culture anyway, our environment as much as an anthill is to an ant, water to a fish.

Scott’s 2006 series of paintings – Microcosm – he describes as “paintings about space, nature, technology and family life.” Some images and themes run through the series. Land islands floating in space inhibited by animals and the owners of spaceships, built over with odd structures, alien plants. Birds. Classic sci-fi imagery.

Probably the most notable of the series is “Eternal Embrace.” Centered on a woman embracing a skull, rainbows and rain intermesh, doves emanating from the skull, a butterfly, the unity of life and death, the flowering of transcendental consciousness uniting opposites.

Click the detail for the full painting.

In the Curtains series stage shows dominate many of the paintings, along with hearts – sometimes pulsating with life, other times drained of it – and a tree, usually prominent and centered on the stage and composed of intertwined tentacles.

“Curtain Call” is a good example to feel the tone of the series. End of the show applause. The tree with a skull on it. Snowmen, robots and strange beings. Nature the stage.

Scott’s latest works are “paintings about love,” with plenty of red colors, hearts both anatomical and cartoon, mother and child, symbols of transformation.

Of the new ones, my favorite is “High Spirits” with a goth girl with serpentine legs sitting on what looks like an Amanita muscaria mushroom flanked by a winged skull being and a child-like thing feeding a bird. Sperm flowing through a skull, another riff on apparent dualities unified.

Official site.