San Francisco based artist Jeremy Mann captures the exciting air of his hometown in his dynamic oil landscapes. His “Cityscapes” series portrays the city from bustling, bird’s-eye views to its more mundane and quiet street corners at night, all flickering with glitchy dabs of paint that makes his art appear digital, though it is a description he rejects. It’s a common misconception that perhaps stems from his process, where he references “jumbled up” digital manipulations of his own photographs.
Dancing with movement, Mann’s impressionistic paintings evoke the emotion and energy he feels while painting in the studio. “My work is a visual expression of myself; of who I am and what I think about the world around me, and is where I channel my moods and emotions through the process of mark making,” he says. However unlike the masters of impressionism like Van Gogh, which mainly used organic curved lines and strong, bright colors, Mann is utilizing a variety of strokes and palette that is closer to reality in order to capture the pulsating feel of life.
On why he paints cityscapes, Mann says, “I can get claustrophobic around too many people, a natural syndrome for many studio artists, and cities are the epicenter of “too many people.” At what point people decided to stop making beautiful buildings and erect hard edge rectangular tombs confuses me. So, in an effort to confront my demons in the safety of my own studio, I paint cityscapes, pretending to the public that they are studies of artistic fundamentals like perspective, balance, shapes and values.”