Mark Stock: Paintings

Mark Stock's paintings connect viewers to the euphoria, loneliness and sometimes fatal entanglements of romance. Often melodramatic and tinged with irony, Stock's images illustrate love's power to provoke our best, and most illicit, behavior. A well-dressed voyeur peeks past the curtain of a mansion window, silent and intent on the object of his desire. Picnicking lovers look into each other's eyes. An attractive woman smokes a cigarette as she sits next to a man's corpse, which has been rolled neatly in a carpet, ready for disposal. A butler steals a moment to treasure lipstick left on a glass by the woman who employs him. Stock's paintings tell the story of each character with remarkable subtlety and, in many cases, with humor. Stock is, after all, a master of the realist style, and he uses color, shadow and line to amazing effect. Details in facial expression, body language and background tell you there's more going on here than rapture, scandal and dangerous liaisons. These paintings keep you coming back for another look, for clues to life's telling moments.