BEAUTY: Painting--Alberto Ortega

The nighttime suburban scenes in Alberto Ortega's paintings are eerily quiet and much like a David Lynch film, it seems there can be a lot bubbling just below the surface, behind those front doors and paned windows...like a restrained emotional nightmare. The occasional figure with a suitcase adds to the dramatic narrative. It feels like danger and incomprehensible acts are hiding out in these darkened streets and seemingly harmless homes.

Top to bottom: A Stop At Willoughby; After Hours; American Pastoral; Back Lot; Cable; Decoy; Deja Vu; Delivery; Everlong; Night Call; Night Swimming; Playdate I

https://albertoortega.art/

BEAUTY: Painting--Alex Selkowitz

I love the simple imagery of Alex Selkowitz's work. They feel like memories. Lonely suburbs. California streets and parking garages.

Top to bottom: A Simpler Time; Barker Hangar; Convenience; Orange Door; Palm Springs; Saturday Night; Stairway To Somewhere; Storefront In Sunlight 2; Storefront In Sunlight 3; Storefront In Sunlight

https://www.alexselkowitz.com/

BEAUTY: Painting--Amber Koroluk-Stephenson

Amber Koroluk-Stephenson lives in Australia but paints suburbs that look like suburbs no matter they are in the world. And like so many artists who portray the suburbs in some form or another, Koroluk-Stephenson perceives that slippery, indefinable creepiness inherent in the suburbs. I was going to talk about the narrative in these images, but they actually seem to exist in some kind of pre-narrative state, suspended in a stillness, full of mystery.

Top to bottom: Arrival; Hidden Spectacle; Humble Abode; The Kiss; Hideaway

http://www.koroluk-stephenson.com.au/

BEAUTY: Painting--Nate Burbeck

I have said it before, I will say it again: the creepiest things happen in the suburbs. And Nate Burbeck shows us what it looks like.

http://nateburbeck.com/

BEAUTY: Painting--Stephen Lack

The suburbs have always creeped me out a little. It seems like they hide a side of people that is the opposite of what the suburbs often pretend to be. I am not the only one who has ever felt this. One of the greatest examples of this kind of duality is David Lynch's film "Blue Velvet." And artist Stephen Lack feels it as well. His naïve, colorful, neo-expressionist paintings of suburban neighborhoods and the people who live there show the kind of violence percolating under the surface.

Top to bottom: Suburban Asteroid; Suburban House Halifax; L.I. Oil Tanks; Our Home; Teenagers Hanging Out By The Pool; Boy Kills Friend; Suburban Hunting Party

Aside from his art and impressive residency and teaching positions at institutes the world over, Lack is best remembered as the star of David Cronenberg's 1980 film "Scanners."

http://stephenlackart.com/

BEAUTY: Painting--Kenton Nelson

I have admired Kenton Nelson's work and very graphic, unnervingly simplified neo-realist style for quite a while. Although he is from and still lives in southern California, several of his pieces evoke my childhood memories growing up in upstate New York. I suppose there is a certain kind of suburban familiarity from that time period, a certain identifiable Americana. There is, inevitably, a similarity to the work of Edward Hopper (when dealing with Americana, such an overlap must occur) but Nelson's end product is so much more sleek, rounded, and pared down to an essence than Hopper's work. I like the following pieces for the iconographic ability to evoke suburbia, summer, and the comfort that such things can represent.

He works almost exclusively in a vocabulary of the 1940s/1950s, and has created some lovely pieces. Visit his website:
http://kentonnelson.com/