Representing Britain at the Venice Biennale back in 1958 had done much to secure Scott’s reputation as a highly respected artist; the decade that followed saw exhibitions aplenty, both at home and abroad and by 1964 Alan Bowness’ monograph on the artist was published. Scott spent a scholarship year 1963-64 in Berlin after he was invited by the Ford Foundation, this time away was transformative to his artistic practice and he overstayed the planned year by several months. He began a series ‘Berlin Blues’ which explored a new set of motifs and a new way of painting for the artist. By the end of 1964, blues had become the his main colours and so this work pre-dates that preoccupation, with its inclusion of brown and black. However, the exploration of new forms that is typical of his Berlin-era work is evident in the present example; gone are the vestiges of still life forms, in their place more abstract forms fill the space. Layered and well-worked over, there is experimentation with the formal possibilities of the paint and pastel. The scratched mark-making concentrated into the surface makes it clear that Scott was working out new relationships between both forms and the surface as a whole.