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Scott Hiestand

Scott has been a resident of Ormond Beach, Florida, for more than 25 years with his wife, Linda, and their dogs.  He was raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, and has been a Florida resident for most of his life. Upon earning his four-year degree in commercial art from the Hussian School of Art in Philadelphia, he was recruited by Hallmark Cards, where he mostly created flower settings and wildlife greeting cards. He later worked for some 35 years as a graphic artist at various newspapers, including fifteen years at the St. Petersburg Times, where he largely illustrated the outdoors pages of the newspaper; seven years as the art director of The Colorado Springs Gazette, eight years at the Orlando Sentinel; and six years at the Daytona Beach News Journal.  Many of his years creating artwork for newspapers were pre-computer days when the artwork was all done by hand. 

Scott’s artwork has been recognized throughout the nation. He designed the Florida bass fish automobile license tag; was the winner of the State of Indiana upland bird contest with an acrylic painting of a wild turkey that was made into a stamp; has had works selected for the Paint America National Gallery tour; was a first-place winner in the plein air category of the Plein Air Magazine Salon Contest; and has illustrated several books. His work is in many private and corporate collections, including the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences, the Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission in Tallahassee, the College of Central Florida, Ocala, and many others.

Scott considers himself to be an impressionistic painter with a touch of realism.  He paints on birch panels rather than canvas, and he uses multiple acrylic washes in his paintings to obtain mood and atmosphere. Scott has evolved into an avid plein air painter (the French term meaning painting outdoors and referring to the practice of painting entire finished paintings outdoors).  As such, he is a regular in several plein air paint-outs. He can sometimes be seen painting “The Loop” or painting in Tomoka State Park in Ormond Beach.  As a licensed falconer for many years, Scott enjoys using some of his own falcons and hawks as live models.   He has a great love of nature and its many changing scenes.  For a more abstract outlet, Scott has created many animal and avian wire sculptures with contrasting positive and negative space, which include egrets, hawks, plovers, cardinals, blue jays, bass fish, and a life-sized ten-foot shark, to name a few. 

Scott teaches various workshops and has taught a weekly acrylic painting class at the Artists’ Workshop of New Smyrna Beach for many years. 

Examples of Scott’s paintings can be seen at Art Spotlight Gallery, 67 West Granada Blvd., Ormond Beach.