This story starts, like so many others … at the beginning! Imagine, if you will, a room full of card-carrying, verified, indisputable fans of the OMEGA M. I’m typing about Mopar® fans so in love with these vehicles they decide to converge on Texas once a year from the four corners of the USA and everywhere in between. The main goal for most in attendance? Hang out with a few thousand like-minded enthusiasts and have an unforgettable time! My goal? Find a handful of folks doing things with a different spin. Something uniquely their own! Well, the gentleman you are about to meet exceeds my goals across the board.
Everyone, meet Scott Fisk. Scott Fisk, meet Everyone! Scott is incredibly personable, a ton of fun to share a table with while epically failing at Bingo, and supremely talented with paint, pens and pencils. I’ll get to it. Scott Fisk is an artist. His style is instantly recognizable, as is his passion for the subjects seen in his creations. You may have seen his work in a Dodge Official campaign a few years back. Have a look. This goes far beyond “Cool”. Words like “Badass”, “Epic” and “Bitchin” come to mind!
Disclaimer: When digging into the hows and whys of Scott’s journey into art, we discovered a mutual love for BMX. I won’t let this spiral into a “why is this entire piece about bikes” thing, but it could! What we do when we are younger impacts what we do later in life, and the early days rolling around the neighborhood on his Coyote left a mark. You can hear it in the way he describes the bike. “It wasn’t like the Stingray. It had lower bars, a black banana seat with three red stripes and a tiny sissy bar just a bit above the seat…” I only mention that to type this: Scott obviously harnessed his attention to detail at a young age. You can see it in his passion for a bike that meant so much to him in the past. And then, you look at the art he creates today with a better understanding of who he is and why he does what he does to create his work.
The common denominator here is vehicles. The not-so-common side of the Mopar world is the unbridled creativity carefully crafted and executed on the cars and trucks Mopar lovers drive. We see the same inventiveness, planning and execution in Scott’s work. Whether it’s for his own brand, a massive corporation or a private commission, the same level of attention is given to each and every project at studio669.net (when you’re done here, head over and have a look around).
I asked Scott where his journey as an artist started. Not surprisingly, he said, “I’ve drawn for as long as I can remember.” At the age of 8, his mother passed, and suddenly drawing became more than a means of self-expression. In his own words, “Drawing became a means of self-preservation and therapy. It was a place I could get inside of and really put my thumb on, in a world where I couldn’t put my thumb on anything.” Fast forward to high school and college, and his path pointed toward drafting and civil engineering. His brothers were engineers. All signs pointed to Scott going down that road as well. But, there was always a light pointing toward automotive art. The description of when the light at the end of the tunnel switched from, “I’m pretty sure that train is going to hit me at some point,” to “Wait… what if that’s someone with a flashlight at the back of the caboose? Let’s jump on and see where I can get this train to go!” defines someone recognizing a life/career spent creating something they have passion and talent for has meaning. Scott was sitting in calculus class and caught himself daydreaming about how much he would rather be doing a flame job on a motorcycle gas tank than learning the definition of a limit. This realization sparked a radical change in his career path and life.
Scott left college, saved some money and found the Butera School of Art in Boston. Upon graduating from Butera, he did a ton of sign work, historic preservation, lettered a metric ton or two of dragsters and started his own sign shop. Scott’s work has been featured as an artist and journalist in countless magazines. His style and presentation are instantly recognizable; we hope you dig it as much as we do.
While interviewing Scott for this piece, I put the words “car” and “toon” together to describe what I saw on the page. While obvious exaggerations are taken with form and from the “real-world” design, the term “cartoon” isn’t something he uses to describe his work. Scott was sitting at his drawing table several years ago when his oldest son detoured in and asked, “What are you working on?” Scott’s reply was, “I’m drawing a cartoon.” His son didn’t hesitate with the following response, “You don’t draw cartoons. You draw AUTOS-WITH-MOTIVE.” The young man dropped a bombshell and simply turned around and walked out of the room, twirling his bubble gum around his finger. I couldn’t agree with the previous description more. There is a purpose to the images Scott creates. You can hear the engines and see the vehicles moving on the page.
Let’s wrap this one up. I think most of you will agree Scott’s 10,000+ hours, talent and passion for his work are more than apparent. He is the real deal. His work speaks for itself. And I have a feeling we will see a ton more Mopar-related content from him in the future.
Scott created the drawings below for WAM 2023 as a Kid Zone activity. While I am sure your kids will have a fabulous time coloring them, I’m also quite sure there are a bunch of “adults” out there who would like to add some color to these as well! We hope you grab a couple and go crazy! When you share your creations with the world, please tag us with a link in the comments below. Break out the art supplies and get after it!
***We ran this by the organizers of WAM, and they are excited to see awesome color added to these images! Permission to print these off for personal use as something to color has been granted by WAM and Scott. These drawings are not to be used for any commercial application.***
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