Scott, though born in Scotland was educated in Northern Ireland (Belfast School of Art) and in England at the Royal Academy School from 1931 to 1935. After leaving the RA he and his wife, who was the painter Mary Lucas, lived in France and opened a school of painting in Pont-Aven. On the outbreak of WW2 they left France for Dublin and later came to England where Scott taught at the Bath Academy of Art until he joined the army in 1942, serving in the Royal Engineers, where he learned printing techniques. In 1946 he was back at the Bath Academy where he became senior painting master. In 1956 he gave up teaching to concentrate on his own career as a painter and print-maker. He spent most summers at St. Ives in Cornwall, joining the colony of English abstract artists centred there. He visited New York in 1953, meeting de Kooning, Rothko and Pollock. He became the leading British abstract expressionist. A retrospective of his work was shown at the Venice Bienalle in 1958, followed by others in Belfast in 1963 and at the Tate Gallery, London in 1972. He was elected as a member of the Royal Academy in 1984. since his death in 1989 further retrospective shows have been held and his works are in important public and private collections world-wide