When I looked at this painting for first time in the late 80’s I shivered. Now 20 years later I almost cry. This is a masterpiece and one of my favorites, if not my favorite, painting by Hess, a true American master.

Mesmerizing Scott. The perspective is haunting, compelling. I’m pulled in three directions out of the squalor into the triptych of the tv/kitchen/view out the window. The view from the window, especially from the “lunar” lamp shade to the sign/moon over the building. I’m not sure exactly why, but the view out the window makes me think of John Sloan’s city views. Is it an old factory? I want to go there…pre-Mickey D time. Quite nostalgic really. Like Joe I could stare at this for an hour.

Scott, this is the piece that introduced me to you. I saw it in an art fair at the LA convention center back in ’88 or so, when i was a painting student at Otis. I stared at it for an hour until my friends dragged me away. I was awestruck. This was the kind of painting i wanted to learn, but no one at Otis was teaching it, sadly. This was sort of the beginning of my disillusionment with art school, or art school as it was then. All i wanted to learn was technical, and all they wanted to teach was expression and theory. I wound up having to figure out a lot of that on my own, and with some help from an older painter who took me under his wing. Anyway, this piece was a big inspiration to me, as was the Max Beckmann one, which, by the way, I also did a version of. Mine was nowhere in the league of yours. I mercifully destroyed it long ago.

Yes, it’s the claustrophobic quality that really brings all the amazing elements together in this, though it would be incredible for a dozen other reasons alone.

One of my favorites, the use of the TV light as a keylight- the dreamlike perspective for the viewer for me is a slightly surreal element that makes the painting more forcefully realistic.

This is just an unbelievable painting. I have never seen anyone paint with so much insightfullness. The angles you use lend so much to the appreciation because I feel like a fly on the wall. Everything is so familiar, yet so horrifyingly grotesque. The girl in her underwear is so damn powerful in the middle of this painting. I’m just blown away.

This is fantastic. I just love how many layers you use for your content. You’re my favorite living painter, Scott. So, here’s what I see. A dining room that isn’t a real dining room (the real dining room is RIGHT THERE). A (sitcom) family that isn’t a real family (the real family is RIGHT THERE). A (junk) meal that isn’t a real meal and there is no real meal. A moon that isn’t real and there is no real moon. Wasting electricity in the next room. Channel 13 on the TV. Newspaper touting the essentials of junk food as the ‘key to college’? The impropriety of a pre-pubescent girl lounging in her underwear. [But are both plants real?] Anyway, either way, I just love it. It just says so much about society. It’s like a sad political cartoon that could win a Pulitzer. It just SCREAMS: Junk! Fake! Waste! SAD! DOOMED!

Scott, you have really distilled American Realism here. There are so many ingredients for nightmares and for questioning how we fail to communicate, feed on media, etc. EXCELLENT painting!