haha… yeah, the rent is always in the background. Thus the wallet in the back pocket of my ‘critical’ self, above.

Some of these are nice. Afternoon makes me think of ‘Noon’, a simple time, but with further resonance. I like the simplicity and coolness of that.

Of course, looking out the window there it looks as if the sun is much lower. Probably late afternoon.

It looks like almost sunset…
“Magic Hour”
“Losing the Light”

This is, as is the norm with your comments, very insightful. I am trying to do some different things right now, inspired somewhat by my students struggles through different means of painting, and, to a larger extent, by the odd ‘lived’ perspective that I see in my iphone panorama shots. I was hooked by this technology with the first shot. It reminded me of some works I did in the early 80s, then abandoned. These screwed perspectives are actually closer to the way we really ‘see’. As the head and eyes move, perspective shifts and tilts. It has given me a bunch of ideas for painting. Though the first that I’m working on is not giving me what I want in terms of the paint (I want to screw that up more, too), I am getting what I want in terms of the depicted space.

In the past I would ‘escape myself’, as I call it, by doing things like sculpture, or my Paternal Suit project (http://halsey.cofc.edu/exhibitions/f.-scott-hess/). I always return to straight painting refreshed. After the last couple of pieces of complex compositions of figures in a believable space, I found myself wanting, to quote my favorite Talking Heads album, to Stop Making Sense. Having spent most of my time in painting making rational space and figure placement, and rational paint handling, I sort of want to fuck it up. We’ll see how it works out. In the past I’ve set out to change things, and in the end it is another F Scott Hess painting.

Most titles come to me very easily, during the painting. A few words will tumble their way into a phrase, I’ll ruminate, shift it around. By the end of the piece it is there. Every once in a while something comes along, like this one, that I have no title by the end. It is a piece with obvious drama, so I feel the title has to do less rather than more.

Just to chime in, I think about it too, and sometimes the scale changing is enough to show a need for change, but generally I’m a distiller. I do keep sketchbooks where I’ll allow myself to do anything, both seem necessary to me. A framework that allows me to make decisions and enough of an open end that I can breathe.

I guess I just give off an evil vibe! It makes me think of “Live Evil”, which is itself reversed.

Maybe “The Weight of Gravitas”

Gravitas certainly. But as an obscure referent I was somehow reminded of Delvaux’s 1939 “The Phases of the Moon” which I first saw when I visited MOMA by myself when I was 13 and has stayed with me. Conjured up by the female figures and the artist as a voyeur viewing (and inescapably PULLED TOWARDS) the four female figures:in a portrait at the top of the stairs, descending the steps, reacting to the artist’s struggle and, finally placed upon the canvas. But even more strongly the title I proposed comes from my associations to the men’s faces [your father] placed on the canvas BEHIND the struggle. Yes, he is BEHIND the struggle. And the tides, the pull of gravity, “Gravity’s Rainbow,” the force behind the phases of the moon, represents the inescapable internal struggle that any sentient artist must face.

This is great. I’d never have gone there. But I can see it. Those phases (faces) of the moon.

Who am I – and if so, how many? Sounds like Steven Colbert!

I like names with layered meaning, and vague enough. I don’t want them to knock people over the head with meaning, or be too obvious.