tanley Goldstein’s paintings are evocative images of everyday life, painted with fluid brushwork that reveals the artist's passion for the lushness of paint. His work is both figurative and dramatic. Describing his role as that of voyeur, Goldstein presents stark, revealing pictures that have a theatrical effect. With the informal look of snapshots, the individuals are captured as if for the quick release of a camera shutter, caught at the awkward midpoint of a gesture or movement. Yet even in images depicting action, one never senses movement stopped or frozen. We are intuitively aware of each preceding and succeeding frame.

Included in the show are large scale paintings of outdoor group scenes, portraits of his pregnant wife and intimate paintings of figures seen through windows. The paintings dare to be the psychological icons of the artist's own inner desire for romance and mystery. The artist says, "I find the ordinary exotic." Perhaps his true subject is "light as it bounces off the object or how the subject dissolves into the light and space," as Goldstein is able to find the warmth, atmosphere and sensual moments that are rarely captured in realist painting.

Goldstein, born in California in 1954, has exhibited in San Francisco at Hackett-Freedman Gallery, Erickson and Elins Gallery, and Jeremy Stone Gallery, and, in Los Angeles, at the Caplan Gallery. He is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara and lives and works in the Bay Area. Most recently Stanley Goldstein’s art was on the cover of Art and Antiques magazine as well as a full feature. This is his second solo exhibition at George Billis Gallery.