The Cincinnati, Ohio, native began his career as a commercial artist and teacher; however, he became nationally known for his work as an etcher, printmaker, and painter.
Along his wife, Evelynne Mess Daily, he became a prominent member of the Indianapolis and Brown County, Indiana, arts communities.
Mess produced mostly Impressionist-style landscapes as a painter, but he was especially known for his aquatint etchings and prints of rural scenes in the modern styles of the 1930s and 1940s.
Mess left Butler after a year and spent a semester at Teachers College, Columbia University, studying art under Arthur Wesley Dow.
After the trio closed the school in 1932, the brothers organized the Circle Engraving Company, where George worked as the head of its commercial art department for the next five years.
[9][10] During the summer of 1929 George and Evelynne Mess took a break from their work in Indianapolis to study art at the École des Beaux-Arts at Fontainebleau, France.
After their return the United States, Mess resumed his work at the Circle Art Academy and continued to paint on weekends and in the evenings.
She later assisted him with the technical aspects of his etching and printing work due to his busy schedule as an art teacher and commercial artist.
[13] In 1937 Mess and his wife moved to Chicago, where he took a job supervising the reproduction of artwork for several magazines that included Esquire, Coronet, and Apparel Arts.
In addition to establishing a weekend retreat on a farm they purchased in Brown County, Indiana, in 1941, the couple spent three months during the summer of 1944 teaching printing to students attending the Old Mill Art School, a school that their friends and fellow artists, Margaret and Wayman Elbridge Adams, had established on their property in the Adirondack Mountains near Elizabethtown, New York.
[16][17] Mess began his career as a commercial artist and art educator; however, he became nationally known for his work as a printmaker and painter.
Trained as a painter, producing mostly Impressionist-style landscapes, he was especially known for his aquatint etchings and prints of rural scenes in the modern styles of the 1930s and 1940s.