Paul Scott lives in Cumbria, North West England, in the type of rural area, which often attracts craft potters. Scott however, has gained international prominence in promoting a practice at odds with the traditional truth to materials and form/function concerns of craft potters, and indeed, of many studio ceramists. A leading proponent of ceramics and print, he has been instrumental in demonstrating the contemporary creative potential of a combination used in industry for hundreds of years to mass-produce decorative wares and tiles. The industrial associations of printed ceramics, the absence of direct traces of the maker's hand and the apparent lack of integrity in mechanically produced imagery, has not recommended this approach to ceramics purists. A decade ago finding print in a piece of studio ceramics would have been unusual, but it is now becoming a relatively common occurrence, not least because of Scott's pioneering example.

Dr Stephanie Brown in Pioneer Printer for Keramik Magazine, June/July 2001

Clay is often seen as an expressive medium. Studio potters speak of their pleasure in handling the raw material, in exploring techniques, and in creating form. Paul Scott takes a different kind of pleasure in his work. His engagement is with the surface rather than the substance of the clay, and even then he shows little interest in experimenting with its formal qualities. Instead he emulates the look of mass produced consumer wares. In spite of this (or perhaps because of it) his work is unmistakable.
In Paul Scott’s hands domestic ceramics mutate into subversive comments on our life and times. His manipulation of the established vocabularies of printed motifs and patterns, and his use of the traditional blue and white, gives his work a particular resonance that leans on our recognition of its roots.

Dr Jo Dahn in Remember Me catalogue essay for exhibition held at the University of Wales 2001

The power of Scott’s work is in the accuracy of his alterations. It is in his truth telling. The tendency of cobalt to bleed helps to invoke that filleted mysticism of nature’s idyll that he so effectively undermines. It stirs memories of the paintings of Corot and Claude..... He has contributed a line of enquiry and a political stand which will have won him few friends either with craft potters or with fashion smitten collectors. His work holds the power to make us uncomfortable. He poses questions about our complacency over the loss of industrial skills and the economic and social consequences for those people who were engaged in production. Scott has challenged the ideas of ‘wild and natural, landscapes’ and focussed on our ill considered interventions and our exploitations.

Andy Christian from The Wild and the Natural, Ceramic Review 244 July/August 2010

By layering a romantic eighteenth-century graphic of a tree against a realistically rendered power plant, or posing cows, complete with genetic identification tags and monstrously engorged udders on a delicate bed of printed forage, Scott forces us to acknowledge the degree to which we repress, naturalize or simply fail to notice the ubiquitous presence of industry and capital in our midst. He makes us recognize the degree to which we are prepared to rationalize and compromise our awareness in order to preserve our fantasy intact. Although subtle, these works critique and expose ideological fallacies, making them the most political work possible.

Amy Gogarty from
Paul Scott’s Confected Landscapes and Contemporary Vignettes, Ceramics Art and Perception No 75 2009.