F. Scott Hess

The thumbnail that is the icon for my museum is a detail of Mud on a Stick, a self-portrait I painted looking in the mirror in 1999 (no, I’m not left-handed). The work stand is the one I’ve used for nearly twenty years, with my softer brushes sticking up from a holder I made by drilling holes in a board. The bristle brushes lie horizontally on a grooved stand, next to the medium and turpentine bottles. My palette is small, and the actual space I use on it to mix paints is only about two inches square. That everything comes out of that tiny space may be the most remarkable thing about my process. Don’t ask me how I do it, because I’ve no clue.

The title Mud on a Stick is inscribed on the anatomical drawing taped to the side of the work stand. In an age when advanced technology rules, and artists work on computers or manufacture their work through industrial processes, I find it magical to be able to capture a viewers mind with paint applied to a surface, essentially colored mud applied with a stick. As the anatomical head also implies, we humans are built of muscle and bone, nothing more than animated mud on a stick.