SEPTEMBER 14 – NOVEMBER 2, 2022

SOCO Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Purpose At Random, a solo exhibition by artist Scott Avett. The gallery will host a conversation via Instagram Live with the artists Scott Avett and Eric Fischl on October 4th at 11AM. This will be the artist’s second solo exhibition with SOCO Gallery. 

Avett’s paintings explore universal themes of faith and observation, love and loss, heartache and joy, as well as the more personal stories of career, family, and life. The artist’s figurative works find the beauty inherent in everyday fleeting moments. His process blends materials and techniques used in screen printing, block printing, and painting to produce richly textured, intimate portraits of those closest to him. Drawing inspiration from literature as well as his familial, spiritual and musical roots, Avett archives and preserves our shared human experience as it is revealed in the transitory moments that emerge from his own life.

Purpose At Random will present new medium and large-scale oil paintings and prints created by the artist from early 2020 through today. Avett managed to navigate the challenges of these past few years with a heightened focus and dedication to his studio practice resulting in a period of prolific creativity.  

I’m not sure that it was easier to paint during the pandemic but it was certainly more available than playing concerts. Painting is a solitary activity. The more time alone the better, I think. The Pandemic provided space. For so many that space was needed to get well or manage very adverse situations. There was much worry and concern about what would be and what was happening. I kept going back to the “meantime” though. In the meantime how would I lean into my purpose which is to create, always. I love painting. It is what I do so I turned to what I do and I did it…a lot. 

The new paintings and prints in Purpose at Random explore the temporal  place of meaning in the artistic process.  For Avett, the narrative weight of a work  can emerge after the creative act. Avett is guided by process - the assembling of elements – and as the  layers stack and join,  relationships and undercurrents present themselves. It is in mustering the trust necessary for this approach that Avett is able to find beauty. 

Purpose at Random  

Whatever we want to paint
Whatever we want to draw
Whatever we want to say or write
Or sing or play

It concerns me to say this
Because I will read it later and be embarrassed 
But everything contains Truth
Except for hate of course 
And even that can be surrounded 
and changed

I did not think long making this
I did not worry about my choices
Now that I mention it
I doubt I had choices
Do you think that you have choices?
I do.
I never do for long though.

My purpose seems so precise 
Especially when I recite my name.

Drunk again
Sad again
Scared again
Why have I feared randomness?
Why have I clutched and guarded?
Why have I pretended?

I am committed now.
I don’t tell the story.
The story Tells me.
And to be told is my Purpose.

Purpose at Random will run alongside the first couple of months of Scott Avett: After the Fact – a solo exhibition at the Greenville Museum of Art (GMoA), Greenville, NC. This exhibition has been organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA), Raleigh, NC in collaboration with SOCO Gallery and Scott Avett. 

Scott Avett (Origin, B. 1976)

Internationally recognized as co-founder of the Grammy nominated band, The Avett Brothers, Scott Avett has been a working artist since he earned a BFA in studio art from East Carolina University in 2000. Until now, his art-making has largely been a solitary creative pursuit in comparison to his life as a musician, singer, and songwriter. 

 Avett’s large-scale canvases reveal an intimate look at growing up and now raising a family in the rural south. They are infused with the personal moments and inspiration Avett draws from his family and their surrounding North Carolina farmland, yet nuanced with the cultural and artistic influences he has encountered through years of life on the road. The majority of Scott Avett’s paintings and drawings, created over the past twenty years, have rarely been exhibited. Unlike his ongoing touring and recording schedule with The Avett Brothers band, the artist’s decades-long visual output has been free of exhibition deadlines or a particular audience expectation. Instead, Avett has worked alone in the quiet confines of his farmhouse studio with the ability to push and refine his work into new areas of artistic exploration, whether it be new mediums, genres, or content.

 Avett’s first museum exhibition opened in October 2019 at the North Carolina Museum of Art. This comprehensive exhibition highlighted his work across 20 years and spanned multiple disciplines, including painting, printmaking, and sculptural objects. An extensive hardbound catalog, Scott Avett INVISIBLE, accompanied the exhibition with an in-depth look into the artist’s visual art practice and the parallels to his songwriting and music development.