[3] Feeling a kinship with the psychological depth and technical skills exhibited by middle-European artists, Hess moved to Austria in 1978, and attended the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna as a student in the Meisterschule of Rudolf Hausner.

The Bastards were a collaborative artists' group including F Scott Hess, John Frame, Steve Galloway, Peter Zokosky, Michael C. McMillen, and Jon Swihart.

Scott Hess describes his stunning cycle of paintings on view at the Orange County Museum of Art as "prayers for atheists."

[7][13] The objects in The Paternal Suit tell the true story of Hess' ancestry in America as seen through the eyes of four centuries of artists and craftsmen, all of whom may or may not have existed.

[9] The collection holds more than one hundred objects, including paintings, old photographs, ceramics, historical documents, weapons, sculpture, and antique artifacts, all appearing as authentic items from their specified time period.

[9] Hess lays no claim to the creation of the artifacts in The Paternal Suit, but acts instead as the collecting Director of his own Family Foundation, dedicated to assembling a visual historical narrative of Hess' paternal line that includes United States Senator Alfred Iverson Sr., and his son, Brigadier General Alfred Iverson Jr., C.S.A.

[9] According to The New York Times, "Mr. Hess came up with his own absurdist art — for example, an oversize Confederate uniform that he said had expanded after exposure to manure fumes — to combine with real evidence of events that include his ancestors' doomed attempts to market newly patented ice makers and chalkboards.