"I think you learn something from the discipline you study in college: how to analyze, how to think," Mor says. That's true whether it's art or math, he adds.

It's tempting to think there might be some math in Mor's work. Perfect angles, symmetrical collages. But actually, Mor is a deeply figurative painter. He is interested in a figure as character, and in scenes as spaces where characters interact. Like so many of his predecessors, he cares about flesh, that centuries-old painterly obsession -- how it looks, how it feels, and what colors can best convey it. He thinks about how a knee bends, how a sleeve opens, the complexity of a pattern on a dress shirt.

The props in the studio tell you something else about Mor. Taking advantage of the time and funding of one of the country's best painting programs, he tries different things, pushes his interests until he is satisfied. The mirrors are the remnants of his self-portraits; the bottles are from the current bar scenes. The color on the floor is from everything, all the experiments in how to see.

The bookshelf has more than the basics. Sure, there's Rembrandt, but also Stanley Spenser, Alex Katz, Alice Neel. Mor's the kind of guy who can talk for ten minutes about how Alice Neel paints knees. But what really jolts about Mor's work is the color -- wild, hopeful color that is confident in its abilities. If anything, the color marks him as a student of German Expressionists like Max Beckmann, something he readily admits.

Mor's self-portraits have a humor that's often wicked. He's got a series of perverts -- men caught with their pants down, or open. The man's face is Mor's own. In one case, he sports a blue wig, in another, a pink wig. These are self-portraits with a twist.

Just before Mor began doing a long series of self-portraits, he was transfixed by Biblical stories. There are three paintings of Isaac and Jacob. In the first, the blind Isaac sits -- with a slight white halo around him -- while a Jacob clad in a red and orange plaid suit faces him. In the second, Jacob and Isaac turn away from each other, with Jacob's back to the viewer. In the third, Jacob stands alone, nude. Or as Mor says: "revealed."

The Isaac-Jacob paintings look contemporary. There's a prominent radiator and modern-looking windows. Mor credits Spenser as one of his mentors in rendering Biblical scenes.

Mor traveled to D.C. to see Spenser's paintings, which included the controversial "The Dustman, " which some say depicts the wise men giving gifts to a garbage collector. Spenser's work gave Mor the freedom to experiment.

"If Spenser can put Christ in his hometown, then I can put Isaac and Jacob in my studio," Mor said.

That willingness to mix themes and places, and to cross eras and centuries in one work is what gives Mor's work both a layered strength and a biting humor.

"These are really paintings about my father and me," Mor says about the Isaac-Jacob series. "It's a dialogue between a young man and an older man."

While the series is not overtly religious, the paintings clearly draw on the familiar Biblical themes of struggle that are still relevant in contemporary life.

"I think it's common in our mid-twenties to question what you've been fed," Mor says when asked about the religious undertones. "I think everyone struggles with religion at one point in their lives."

Another story that attracted Mor was the Ruth and Boaz story. Here, again, Mor was convinced that he was painting a Biblical scene. But looking back, he realizes he was in fact painting portraits of close friends, placed in the costumes of Boaz's workers.

"I ended up making a painting about my friends and me," Mor laughs. "Whether you are making a monumental painting or not, it ends up being about what's in your heart -- which in this case was my friends."

What excites Mor right now is the large painting he's starting. When I visited, it was still in the underpainting stage -- the first halting steps a painter takes when planning a work. It's a bar scene, influenced by Manet's bar paintings, like the famous Folies-Bergeres scene.

Mor could not stop smiling when asked about his new project, which happens to take up an entire wall in his studio.

"It's got everything -- color, action," he says excitedly. And this time, Mor thinks what he's learned from all the self-portraits and the Biblical scenes will come through.

"The paintings teach each other things," Mor says. "I'm understanding color better."

That's true for Mor's viewers too. After a few minutes, these paintings teach: about color and its possibilities, about a sense of humor in a painting, about the relevance of a Biblical story to a nineties father and son.

"My heroes all had a lot of stuff in their painting," Mor says, referring to Beckmann and Spenser. "They were able to do it all."

Like his heroes, Mor knows he must pack what he's learned into every painting. That's exciting not only for the young man wielding his brush, but for viewers looking for serious art that speaks to them.

A few minutes poking around the studio is all it takes to realize that this young painter knows how to layer meaning without losing his sense of humor -- or his sense of the feel of paint.