AstronautDinosaur

I paint astronauts and, sometimes, dinosaurs.

[astronautdinosaur]

Here it is, folks. Six years of work. My second book "Astronaut II: Journeys in Time and Space" launches today as a Kickstarter project from Paragon Books, and I couldn't be more proud of it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paragon-books/scott-listfields-astronaut-ii-art-book

It's the follow up to my sold out previous book, from 2019, and is one of the most important and most personal projects of my life. Over 300 paintings, and more than 20 short essays telling the stories that inspired them. During this time, my career shifted to predominantly solo shows of my work, which I chose to treat as chapters of an ongoing story. A story about a lone astronaut. A story about political upheaval, environmental crises, and a global pandemic. But during this time my work also became considerably more personal, and a lot of these stories are about loss, nostalgia, and legacy. It's a parable about the end of things. About looking back. And looking forward.

I really hope that if you enjoy my work that you will love this book. The team at Paragon Books has done an incredible job with it, and it looks fantastic. We've chosen to launch it as a Kickstarter in order to pre-sell as many copies as we can, so I hope that you'll choose to support it. The book is priced very modestly, in my opinion, at $45, but we've arranged some optional perks for you to get onboard early. We have a Kickstarter exclusive alternate cover which comes with a bookplate signed by me. We've got exclusive limited edition signed mini prints. But the most important thing is to get this book in your hands, and to support this project, which I hope you will do.

The book is done and ready to go, so if you order a copy through the Kickstarter, you should expect it to arrive within a couple of months. Unfortunately the Kickstarter is US only. I know, I know. I'm hoping a lot of folks outside the US will want a copy, and we'll work on an eventual solution for you, but international shipping is a headache we're not quite prepared to solve. Sorry!

So please head over to our Kickstarter and order a book, a signed book, or some mini-prints. Thanks as always for the support, everyone!

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My next show Oh, Dystopia opens August 24th, from 6-10pm at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles. The response to this show has really been amazing and I want to thank everyone who has reached out, left a comment, hit that heart button, or - especially - bought a piece from the show. It really means a lot to me.

This show is not exactly a greatest hits compilation, but I’ve returned to some of the subjects nearest and dearest to my heart. Sweeping, beautiful dystopian landscapes, crumbling skyscrapers, occasional fast food references, the lost promise of science fiction and technology, the hubris inherent in all of us to think that what we have built will last forever. And yet. And yet! I strived to make these paintings really beautiful because there’s something truly noble in leaving your mark on this world, even (or especially) knowing that it won’t last forever. In the end, that’s what this show is about. And so, despite the ruins in each painting, in this case literally a crashed spaceship, I feel these works are kind of hopeful. We build things. They fall down. We build them again.

Join me, tomorrow night, if you can, for my latest show, Oh, Dystopia.

[astronautdinosaur]

Here's a story about a wolf.

It begins a long time ago when a much younger version of me went off to Europe for the first time. I studied in Italy. I walked cobblestone streets. So many cobblestone streets. I rode trains and saw places I might never see again. I came home and those journeys eventually inspired me to paint astronauts.

Last fall I traveled to Europe again. I began in Copenhagen, and spent the next 10 days heading north, first to Malmo and Gothenburg, in Sweden, and then on to Oslo, Norway for a gallery show I was supposed to be having . A show which, I found out just a few days before I was supposed to leave, had been canceled. Well, delayed. To a time and place that wasn't Oslo. This all happened for a very sad and extremely valid reason but it left me traveling Europe, alone, on a trip that suddenly had no real purpose. But it was about to find one.

From Oslo I flew to Riga, Latvia and met up with my brother at the airport, who had arrived just before me from Boston. We spent the next week traveling through Latvia and Lithuania to the places where our ancestors once lived. I didn't really have any preconceived notions as to how this part of the trip would go. There would probably be no long lost Listfield cousins to find. No one in my family is left in this part of the world. I guess I wanted to see where I come from. I wanted to walk the same cobblestone streets my ancestors once did. I didn't expect anything profound to happen. It did though.

Our trip ended in Vilnius, Lithuania's very charming capital city. Arriving late, and tired from the road, we wound up by chance walking along the river that winds its way through the center of town. The sun was setting, and it was a mild September night. People were about. Lots of people. So very many people. My brother noticed it first: something was happening. That's when we saw the wolf.

On the riverbank just ahead of us was a large statue of a wolf. Looming over it was an ancient castle tower, lit dramatically from below and perched precariously on a hill. As the last bit of sunlight faded, the wolf spoke.

I don’t speak Lithuanian, but some quick googling revealed that the wolf was sharing the story of the founding of Vilnius. It spoke in a booming voice, with occasional pauses as music swelled. Fire from an unknown source danced around the bottom of the wolf and eventually, as the night wore on, it was engulfed in flames. Smoke and hot ash fell on our faces. I wondered if we were a safe enough distance away.

As the fire subsumed, we wandered off, dazed, along the river bank with hundreds of Vilnius residents. We had just celebrated the fall equinox and the 700th anniversary of the founding of Vilnius. It felt like we had just been part of something very primeval. I felt Lithuanian. I felt pagan. I felt wolf. I returned to my hotel room, ash still on my face.

My next show THE EQUINOX opens March 21, 2024 at StolenSpace Gallery in London, and features 9 new paintings of an astronaut traveling to some of the places I visited on this trip, accompanied by a wolf who appears in one form or another in each of them. Sometimes as a companion, sometimes as a statue, a relic, a mural, a ghost, or a metaphor.

Epilogue: My third great grandfather was born in the small town of Šėta, Lithuania, sometime around the year 1837. His name was Wolfe.

[astronautdinosaur]

Well, I'm just a modern guy.

Of course I've had it in the ear before.

Here's another one from AM Gold, my latest show, about music and time travel, which is up through April 29th at Harman Projects in New York. This one's an important one for me in a number of ways, but it's especially relevant TODAY because I'm going to go see Iggy Pop perform tonight for the very first time. Let's be honest, I don't know how much longer this beloved and shirtless and leathery icon is going to be around, so I'm excited to catch him while he's still upright and mobile. I'm hoping it will be a great show, but either way, it will be really cool for me to look back at my life one day and say: I saw Iggy Pop perform and didn't get spit on.

OK, I'm being presumptuous about the spit part. Fingers crossed.

[astronautdinosaur]

Oh my God, it's a mirage

My latest show AM Gold is up now at Harman Projects in NYC. Check it out through April 29th.

[astronautdinosaur]

“Yo world I hope you're ready for me.“

AM Gold, my latest show about music and time travel, opens this Saturday April 8th 6-8pm at Harman Projects in NY. I’ll be there in my finest fur hat. Will you?

Get pumped for the show by listening to the time traveling AM Gold playlists I made on Spotify 👉🏻 https://bio.site/scottlistfield . Sign up for the preview by emailing [email protected]. Check out the show in person or on the Harman Projects site when it goes live. Don’t touch that dial!

[astronautdinosaur]

I’ve got a new print out today for charity, folks! I’ve partnered with House of Roulx and KultureCity for this one, releasing today, opening day for the baseball season.

Last summer I created the original painting "Fenway" in order to support the charity Kulturecity, the nation's leading nonprofit on sensory accessibility and acceptance for those with invisible disabilities such as ptsd, autism, dementia, and strokes. Kulturecity has officially partnered with many large venues around the globe - including Fenway Park - to make those experiences safe and welcoming for those with sensory needs.

I grew up in Boston and was excited to make a painting of my hometown baseball stadium. After auctioning off the original for charity, I reached out to the folks at House of Roulx about doing a print release so that some more of the baseball fans I know might be able to get a version of this piece to hang in their home. A portion of the proceeds will go to support Kulture City, and their mission.

Grab one now right here.

[astronautdinosaur]

My latest show AM Gold opens April 8th 6-8pm at Harman Projects in New York. It's a show about music and time travel. How music sometimes has the ability to transport us back to a specific place in our lives and, if even for a second, relive our past. This one is based on vague memories I have of waiting to be picked up by a friend's mom in her wood paneled station wagon, where we'd listed to the radio on the way into preschool. I couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 at the time, and while I've always had a good memory of my childhood, I've read many articles recently suggesting that memory is, in many instances, more a fabrication of our mind than an accurate capturing of reality. Despite my belief in my own memories as tangible things, I also totally believe that they're often probably a mix of random feelings, dreams I once had, and totally made up nonsense. But this show is also about the haziness of memory, about how transporting yourself back in time doesn't necessarily solve your present day problems. It is, as they say, more about the journey than the destination. So let's go back in time and turn on the radio, shall we? I've created a series of playlists on Spotify for this show which chart the course of my life in various ways. From soft rock hits of the 70's to middle school dance jams to Britpop to the Strokes. They're meant to accompany the paintings, but really I made them for myself. I tracked down music I hadn't really listened to in decades. I added music I just listened to yesterday. This list, like a mixtape, is meant to show off my esoteric musical tastes but, unlike a mixtape, is unafraid of revealing me to be a total nerd. There's a lot of uncool stuff on here. But it's the soundtrack to my life, where a lot of uncool stuff happened. Give them a listen here - https://open.spotify.com/user/1234373217 And maybe I'll see you at the show opening in New York. I'll be there. And, if you think you might be interested in any paintings from this show, make sure you reach out to [email protected] and ask to be put on the preview list!

[astronautdinosaur]

My next show is about music and time travel. It's called AM Gold. It opens April 8th at Harman Projects in New York.

Generally speaking, I make paintings about the future, but I've lately found myself looking more backward than forward. Maybe I'm getting older (I'm definitely getting older). Or maybe it's because the last three years have been, to put it as eloquently as I can, massively f*cked up. But I've been time traveling lately. Revisiting old haunts, old friends, old paintings, and old music.

As part of this process of remembering my past, I recreated some long lost playlists from the course of my  life. The top 40 stuff I used to tape off the radio when I was in 6th grade. Hipster blog music from the mid 2000's. Semi-forgotten indie rock from the 90's. 70's soft rock. 90's hip hop which samples 70's soft rock. Brit pop from that time when I thought I wanted to move to London.

As much as anything else, these songs define my life. They're the soundtrack to everything I've ever done. And although I began this journey making playlists to help me document my own personal story, I realize that the songs themselves are as much the subject matter as the memories they inspire.

And so I made a show about music and time travel. I was inspired by the kind of physical artifacts we mostly don't have, don't need, or don't care about anymore: Album covers, CD's, posters, cassette tapes, stereo equipment (with actual knobs), band flyers, zines, photos cut and pasted from magazines, mix tapes shared amongst friends, passed down from cooler older siblings, or made to impress crushes. Of course we now live in a streaming era, and I wouldn't have been able to circle back and find the music which tells the story of my life without it. And so, accompanying this show will be a selection of playlists which I'll post on Spotify. It's an extremely personal list. It's not the best music of the last handful of decades. It runs through a number of incongruous genres. It's definitely not cool. In other words, it's me. AM Gold: the songs from my past, in the present.

[astronautdinosaur]

I painted a unicorn you guys, and now it’s available as a print! Hot off the presses, head over to The People’s Printshop and grab one before they’re gone, just like real unicorns, these suckers are rare and magic and smell like horse. (Editor’s note: prints do not come with horse smell). So what are you waiting for? Go get one while you can!

[astronautdinosaur]

Happy birthday, Mr. Bowie.

[astronautdinosaur]

Rolling into 2023 like

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Miami! Here’s the second piece I have up this week at the Context Art Fair, with the fine folks at S16 Gallery. Keep your eyes peeled for it, alongside a killer line up of artists, at their booth, if you happen to be making the rounds down there this week.

[astronautdinosaur]

Miami! I’ve got two new paintings at CONTEXT Art Fair which opens today, somehow. This first one I’m showing with my old pals at Harman Projects. If you’re down in Miami for the art fairs this week, keep your eye peeled for it. Sadly I couldn’t make it down there in person this year, as I’m in my studio working on some new stuff. But I’ll be thinking of you all having fun and cavorting and whatnot. Take some pics for me! (just keep it SFW 😬).

[astronautdinosaur]

I’ve got a new print out today from the fine folks at Thinkspace Projects. This one is from my recent show with them THE MULTIVERSE, and is a sizable 20x30 inches and comes with a really cool embossed logo at the bottom. It’s an edition of 100 and you can grab one, while supplies last, right here.

[astronautdinosaur]

America! Please vote! I know you’re all sick of hearing this and I’ll admit I’m not always enamored with the results, even from people I actually voted for. But this is an important one. If you haven’t already dropped off a mail in ballot, please find the time to vote today.

[astronautdinosaur]

Here’s a Tyrannosaurs Rex to remind you it’s the end of daylight savings.