SANTA MONICA

Mark Stock’s work is a young man’s art. Populated with smooth-skinned, pretty people, his large canvases and charcoal drawings are overflowing with romantic passion and the conviction that there’s nothing more important in the world than to paint.

This belief is no shallow dream, for Stock is a consummate printmaker and draftsman who has an exuberant way with paint and a penchant for dramatic circumstance. Indeed, here is someone for the people who think artists today don’t know the first thing about making real art.

Stock takes his talent and runs with it--often to melodramatic ends in a show that charges realism with emotional turbulence. His yellow light turns lurid in an untitled canvas centering on unspoken tension among three men. In that and other works, a secretive, lustful atmosphere is thick enough to cut with a palette knife. Even so, it’s thrilling to see how red light plays around the lapel and cuffs of a dark suit or to be swept away by the elegance of fabric covering a lovesick man’s back.

The most prevalent character (probably a self-portrait, to some degree) is a moony, slickly groomed young chap in a tuxedo. He seems to be in the throes of a crisis as he bangs his head against a wall, gazes from a balcony or simply leans off-balance against a wall. A wealthy young narcissist who has nothing to do but emote? Well, no. The titles announce, “The Butler’s in Love.” We should have guessed from the tell-tale white gloves.

Portraying handsome servants in elegant dress (one painting depicts a bellhop in a flaming red suit against a turquoise background) gives the work an intriguing social twist. No persecuted vassals, neither are these characters ordinary working stiffs. Everything about them is so theatrical that we watch them as if they are characters in a play. (Tortue Gallery, 2917 Santa Monica Blvd., to Dec. 21.)