A Painter's Painter

Scott Hunter, 40, is a likeable, deep-thinking man who invests his heart into his work. He is a painter who described his process of beginning a piece of Abstract Expressionism as “destroying the canvas first.” And his wife and business manager, Molly, supports his artistic habit when she said, “He needs to paint.”

Hunter is the first self-identified artist in his family. His father, Frank Hunter, was a school teacher in the Upper St. Clair District; a man who stretched to grasp his son’s unquenchable thirst for art, but encouraged him nonetheless. Hunter’s mother, Sheron, nurtured his exploration into art; Her’s was an abandoned ambition, as described by Hunter, "She chose the route of becoming an art teacher instead of jumping into the uncertainty of being a career artist." 

Hunter challenges himself. As a boy, he immersed himself in magazines—studying the detail in faces and images—and drew what he saw. His portfolio includes mural, abstract, representational and portraiture. “I can paint just about anything,” Hunter said.

The initiation into the representational style of art made an impression on Hunter. It is prevalent in the mural work that he does in his business, Clinker Brick Murals.

He has created murals in game rooms, nurseries, bedrooms and dining rooms in homes in Bethel, Wexford and Beaver. Hunter thinks about taking on larger, more complex projects. “I want to go bigger. A big, giant wall is exciting to me,” Hunter said.

Hunter operates in the active, teeming confluence where the abstract meets the representational. In a sense, he embodies the metaphor of a sailor navigating thrashing waters; listening and learning; steering a body of work toward its salvation; reverently approaching a powerful theme so that he may articulate its truth in a painting.

He spoke about the role of murals in space-making for businesses and public areas. “Where I can help is that I can give my take on the thing. We can do something more artful,” Hunter said.

A large Abstract painting hangs on a wall in the living room of his Cape Cod Style home in Bethel Park. Sitting on a sofa beneath the piece, Hunter described his drive for perfection—the difficulty of knowing when to “let go” of a piece--and the relationship between a painting and its viewer.

“It’s very much about me—it’s about the process. I hope that it’s more than about being decorative. I want them to know a little bit about where it came from,” Hunter said.