The Lotus Flower

F. Scott Hess

6 a.m. in the Hours of the Day series, The Lotus Flower depicts a boy, a middle-aged man, and an old man in a boat. A crone in a bathrobe and tennis shoes hands them her catch of the day. Behind her the large flower of a Lotus plant blossoms as the morning sun struggles to break through the mist. Painted in the egg tempera and oil Mixed Technique, the colors are soft and muted, but the old lady is one of the more memorable characters in the whole epic. The fish reappears, cooked, in the 6 p.m. hour painting, The Reception.

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Bijan Anthony Shabandi

Good choice of descriptive noun, a crone!!!

April 6, 2012

Marc Trujillo

I still think this tree could be an inclusion of the phallus of the viewer (painter) into the pictoral space of the painting… (my feelings won’t be hurt if you delete this comment) Actually, I do think it adds tension as the viewer is sort of balanced on the log if they don’t want to get wet, which could tie back to the first point…
That water with the rocks through it is spectacular.

May 29, 2010

F. Scott Hess

That phallic bit is true. There was a sexual element to that log. I even worked in a vagina into the bark to carry the yin-yang symbolism into it. I think you’d see it if you enlarge the image.

May 29, 2010

Eleana

Ever get the itch to work in egg tempera again?

May 12, 2010

F. Scott Hess

I do it every once in a while, and I’ll mix it in with other painting techniques sometimes. I did that with The Open Window in this series, and with Painted Man with Meteors in the Recent Work collection.

May 12, 2010

Cecily Herzig

I love the rocks in the water between the viewer & the boat…

May 12, 2010

F. Scott Hess

I like those, too, because they happened so effortlessly. All of the water and reflections are just invented, but the trick was to not screw it up as I progressed with the painting.

May 12, 2010