Scott McDaniel – Painting Alaska
By Debra McGhan

Scott McDaniel touches his brush to the canvas, highlighting the team of huskies stilled silently in midstride beneath a curtain of northern lights. With a swish through the thinner and a change of color, he adds a dot of light and the cabin glows with life. Back to the thinner and palette for a new pigment, he signs his name boldly across the bottom. One more McDaniel original complete.
 

From the majestic peaks of Mt. McKinley to the dazzling aurora borealis to the solitude of a Tlingit campsite, Scott spent more than 60 years capturing Alaska’s beauty on canvas. Dancing with color and movement, his impressionistic style displays passionate emotion for the subjects he chooses. Each picture, a feast for the visual senses.
 

Over the years McDaniel’s list of accomplishments in the world of art continued to grow. At the time of his death in December 2012, he proudly boasted a fistful of awards, over 26 limited edition prints and his original paintings on display around the world.

A French woman, who purchased a McDaniel oil while visiting her son in Alaska, told the artist she wanted to take her treasure home to France because it would be like owning a miniature Monet.”
 

“What a compliment!” the artist laughed, his bright blue eyes sparkling with pleasure as he recalled the incident.
 

A letter postmarked Japan from Ken Igaue, the world foremost expert on Shakespere, lies open on the table; “the touch of a master,” he said of McDaniel’s work. “I am honored to own one of your beautiful masterpieces, a work of art to be treasured for all time.”
 

The climb to fame has been a rough struggle for McDaniel. He clearly recalls losing everything he owned, not once, but twice to house fires.
 

But how did it all start? What inspired McDaniel to Paint? And why Alaska?
Born in Ohio in 1926 and transplanted to California as a young boy, McDaniel began attending art school in the fifth grade. “I must have been a real pain to my regular teacher,” he said. “I was always trying to get attention. One day this kid got up and started drawing pictures of elephants on the blackboard and I thought, ‘Gee, I can draw pictures as good as that, and he’s getting attention.’ So I got up and started drawing pictures too.”
 

After looking at his untrained skill, the teacher decided to enroll McDaniel in a special art class for gifted and talented students. “I thought it was great. I got out of her class every Friday for several hours to draw.”
During high school, McDaniel furthered his interest in art by drawing cartoons. “I drew the characters and made up my own captions. And in later years, I became the cartoonist for the tri-cities newspaper.”
 

He started using oils when a friend in the Sea Bees (construction crew for the Navy) wanted the emblem painted on a bag. Unable to find anyone to do the artwork, the friend offered to buy McDaniel the materials he needed if he would make a go of it.
 

“I painted it on his bag and then on a leather jacket. When his friends saw the jacket, they all wanted theirs done too. Next thing I know, I’m painting leather jackets.”
 

After serving a two-year stretch in the Navy from 1944 tp 1946 during World War II, McDaniel returned to California and married his high school sweetheart, Maxine Winsor. For two years, McDaniel attended college studying the art of cosmetology. But a thirst for adventure and a craving to see new scenery drove McDaniel to ask his wife about taking a one-year long trip north to Alaska.
 

“Alaska really inspired me to paint,” he says. “I wanted to capture it on canvas.”
The couple homesteaded near Glennallen, Alaska in Copper Center until their cabin burned down in 1951. Returning from a trip to Anchorage for supplies, McDaniel found the cabin destroyed and his family gone.
“I was so relieved when I found them safe at a neighbors,” he remembers. “We decided we’d had enough homesteaded, so we cleaned up the mess and moved to Anchorage.”
 

Once he passed the state board of cosmetology, McDaniel got a job in a beauty shop as a hairdresser. The shop owner bought two of his early painting for Christmas gifts. “That was the first time I actually got paid for my art. And if it hadn’t been for selling those two paintings, we wouldn’t have had any Christmas presents that year.”
 

Then in 1964, just five days after the 1964 earthquake that devastated Alaska, fire struck again destroying their home on Campbell Lake. With four children and no place to go, McDaniel packed up his family and headed back to California.
For several years the earthquake and this second fire caused unrest for McDaniel. But finally, the call of Alaska became too strong and in 1968 the family returned.
 

During this time his love for art continued to grow and he continued to observe and study the work of other masters.
 

“I wanted to capture my impressions of Alaska, so I studied the impressionists from Manet, Pissarro, Cezanne, Monet to Renior.”
 

McDaniel followed not only the impressionist of the 19th century era, but some of the great Alaska impressionist including Sydney Laurence, Eustace Ziegler and Theodore Lambert.
 

“Sydney Laurence is definitely one of my all time favorites,” McDaniel says. “When I came to Alaska, I walked into some these places like the National Bank of Alaska, and the first thing I’d see were these enormous, masterful, beautiful paintings of seascapes and landscapes. And they were Laurence’s. Sydney Laurence’s.”
 

In homes and galleries around Alaska, McDaniel saw a wide variety of Lauerence Paintings. And each one remained engraved in his memory.
 

“I would rarely ever see one that I wasn’t impressed with. It would stick in my mind and I would end up doing a small sketch of it to eventually get it out of my head. I’d try to capture some of the things he would do in a painting. So consequently I was very influenced by him.”
 

Over the years, McDaniel developed his own impressionistic style, and in 1969 finally gave up all his other ocupations (ranging from cosmetology to selling sport goods to making fishing rods) and began painting full time.
 

To reproduce Alaska’s beauty on canvas, McDaniel spends endless hours in the field sketching, drawing, painting and photographing the scenes around him.
 

“I think without actually getting out there, you can never really know what those colors are. I’ve taken thousands of photographs and brought them back to my study, but it’s just not the same.
 

“Color moves and changes in nature and a picture is merely one second of frozen color.”
 

Indoors McDaniel paints in a small converted bedroom on the north side of the house. Why the north side? “The light is more constant,” he explains. “South light gets so bright you have to keep the curtains closed. I hate not being able to look outside.” Florescent light fixtures illuminate the room from several angles. Paintings in various stages of completion decorate the walls and floor.
His current project, a scene of Tlingit Indian huddled near a fire with his canoe beside him, sits beneath the bright lights on a small easel.
 

“I have developed what I call my painterly look,” explains McDaniel. Taking a touch of green on the end of his brush, he turns to his easel to demonstrate. “You lay the paint on the canvas in juxtaposition to the other colors. Rather than actually mixing the color, you allow the viewer’s eye to do the blending.”
His major commissions include “The Creation of Sam McGee” (an original oil painting as well as limited edition print) purchased for the grand opening of “Dolly World” in Corrytoion, Tennessee.
 

An other original, a gift for President Nixon from the Boy Scouts of America, is part of the White House Collection. Also, every Alaska US Senator since statehood owns one of his paintings. And “McKinley Country” (purchased by the American Congress of Surveys and Mappers) earned him world-wide recognition.
Today, McDaniel originals hang on display in 21 foreign countries and every state in America.
 

His most recent major commission is for the Alaska Sportsman Association and boasts a collage of sporting activities from fishing to claming to duck hunting. This painting was the cover for the 1989 calendar cover for the association.
McDaniel has won dozens of awards over the years including the National Veterans Association. “And it all started with a blue ribbon at the Alaska State Fair in 1955,” he says with a laugh.
 

Several private collections of his work are on public display in Anchorage at local banks, art galleries and his own studio.
 

There are currently 26 limited edition prints of McDaniel originals (including the 1986 Anchorage Fur Rendezvous print) available in gift shops around Alaska.
How does he keep up with the demands his art has created? “Maintaining the self discipline over the years has been hard at times,” McDaniel said. “I love to fish and play golf, and believe me, when it’s fishing time, I’m out there with my rod and reel. (As proof, Alaska Outdoor Magazine honored with the Sports Fisherman of the Year Award in 1987.)
 

His wife motivated him to stay in his studio and create.

Living for a time in Hawaii, McDaniel took up golf, so when the sun is shining, your sure to find his energetic spirit on the greens.