When starting out as a painter Scott was obsessed with the works of Goya and Rembrandt, and the painters of the London School: Auerbach, Freud, Uglow and Bacon. Spending hours in galleries, he would observe their paintings from different viewpoints. He would stand very close to a picture, studying the ways in which the artist had physically applied the paint, working out which tools or implements had been used, assessing the viscosity of the paints and the speed and weight with which the marks had been applied. In being up close he could see the abstraction; viewing the painting on a minute and detailed level. He would then stand back, watching the transition as abstract marks transformed and cohered into readable figures.