Life Moves Through ‘Hours’

For Los Angeles painter F. Scott Hess, simply being a family man is an epic.

Hess embarked on a series seven years ago, inspired by his family life. The 24 surrealistic paintings that complete “The Hours of the Day” are on view at the Orange County Museum of Art. Collectively, they illustrate life’s highs and lows and its cyclic nature.

“One of the big drives for the series is being a father, a family man, hitting middle age and realizing that you’re going to die,” said Hess, 46, whose first initial stands for Frederick. “Until I was 30, I felt I was immortal and death seemed a long way away. The issues of mortality come into play very strongly in this series.”

The 24-hour cycle seemingly has no beginning and no end. But the pictorial narratives are generally grouped in themes and time frames: building, planning and construction work start the mornings; afternoons are for social gatherings; sexuality fills the twilight; and dreams burn past the midnight hours.

“The ‘Hours’ are domestic drama writ large,” states Art in America managing editor Richard Vine in the catalog’s opening essay.

The hours are linked with recurring images--a lotus, homes, hilltops, a ladder, a tray, a bamboo plant, a fish, a red blanket--symbolic of birth, initiation, adult struggle and death.

The collection is a quasi family portrait. Hess appears as “The Architect” in the morning and his wife of 13 years, Gita, is seen in the evening. Their daughters, Ava, now 11, and Atiyeh, 7, appear in afternoon paintings.

“Mothers on the Mount” is an ode to the nurturing aspect of motherhood, inspired by women at a child care center.

The 1996 “On the Roof” and 1999 “Initiation” paintings concern fatherhood and duties.

At times Hess expresses a child’s viewpoint. In one painting, a girl’s expression is one of wonder; she’s stunned by the beauty of a house as it burns down.

“Children have this openness to their experiences. They find beauty in some strange places,” Hess said. “The characters are members of an extended family, which becomes a microcosm of mankind.”

Although the exhibition catalog begins with a startling birthing scene, Hess’ first painting was “The Red Door” in 1994, a work representing midnight. His next was the 1995 “L’Orange Sauvage.”

Hess neither planned to complete two dozen paintings nor did he sketch the subjects; hence, the mixed sequence. As in life, he wanted chance to take its course.

“In many of the images, the mysteries are still there for me. I’m not the expert in what the paintings mean,” said Hess, who writes fictitious passages for each work. The narration adds to the mysterious quality of the paintings.

His family life became more of a focus after he spent six years in Europe and became homesick. The University of Wisconsin art graduate, who also studied painting in his postgraduate years at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in Austria under Surrealist painter Rudolf Hausner, returned to the United States in 1984.

The fictional characters in his paintings are based on real people he has met or seen.

“I mostly spent more time with these imaginary people than real people,” said Hess, who holed up in his windowless studio in Echo Park to finish the series.

The eerie eyes--at times wicked, sinister, playful, inquisitive and innocent--of several characters tend to send a shiver down the spine.

“It’s meant to pull you in, as if the person in the painting is saying to the viewer ‘This is your life too.’ It’s like a narrator telling a story,” Hess said. “In a way that makes you equally guilty that you are part of the activity in the painting.”

Hess wants the character and viewer to connect.

“These people are pretty average in their placement in society. There’s a questioning of the viewer and the viewer’s moral stance in the world,” he said.

Many of the paintings borrow from ancient techniques. In about half a dozen works, including “The Reception” and “Through the Fence,” the artist uses an archaic glazing method known as egg tempera to create a transparent, reflective layer in the paints that builds the intensity of the color. The reds, in particular, seem to glow.

Hess also refers to classical compositions from the Old Masters, in admiration of their fine draftsmanship.

“Noah Forgotten,” for instance, shares a likeness to Bellini’s “The Drunkenness of Noah,” in which Noah is intoxicated and his pants are pulled down. “Fire” resembles an Annunciation painting of da Vinci. The figures to the right in “The Red Door” are an homage to Ribera’s 1632 “Ixion.”

Hess’ last painting “The Architect,” bears a likeness to Vermeer’s “The Geographer.” Vermeer and Rembrandt are great sources of inspiration for Hess.

Throughout art history the “Book of Hours” genre has been a guide to religious devotion. But Hess’ “Hours” is a tribute to mythic triumphs in the average person’s mundane routine.

“My desire as an artist has always been to make the figures real, to pull viewers into the reality of the paintings,” Hess said.

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“The Hours of the Day,” Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $4-$5; children under 16 and members, free; free Tuesdays. Ends Jan. 6. (949) 759-1122.