Because It’s Not Romantic If No One’s Watching. (Oil painting, 2012, by local artist Jeremy Mangan, now showing through December 1 at Linda Hodges Gallery in Pioneer Square, more images on the artist’s web site.)
- COURTESY THE ARTIST AND LINDA HODGES GALLERY
If you’re like me, you’ll see echoes of Nathan DiPietro’s lightly perverse landscapes in Mangan’s deadpanning. I love the small oil and acrylic on panel Just Right, 2012. It feels like a sendup of Thomas Kinkade’s paintings-of-light, in which each house glows a “heavenly” gold. Rather, this house rages. Somebody—or something—is crazy in there, burning the place up and pumping the heat out so hard through the ten chimneys that the out-of-doors is starting to melt around the home.
