Ann Gale “Paintings and Drawings”
steven harvey fine art projects
This event has ended.
Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects presents a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Ann Gale. This is the artist’s first one-person exhibition in New York City. This exhibition originated at Gale’s alma mater, Rhode Island College. It includes four drawings and six paintings dating from 2014, including a large format painting.
Gale is a relentless painter of the human figure. She works directly from the model, over prolonged sittings, adhering to an intense program of observation. Gale attempts to capture the passage of time endured by her subjects. Her layers of somber color reflect the quality of light as it changes through the seasons. Gale’s figures seem to dissolve before us and then coalesce around the eyes, calling attention to the very act of looking and dramatizing the space between viewer, artist and subject. As scholar Bruce Nixon puts it, “the paintings contemplate at length the problems entailed in seeing and being seen, in looking and being looked at, in knowing and being known.”
Gale never assumes that anything is a given in the process of looking. She makes drawings from her paintings and returns again to familiar subjects. Gale creates pictures of great psychological depth, explaining that “during the adjustment of the figure, the space and the light itself becomes an emotional character. While there is a precision to the measuring there is also an intimacy that is revealed.” Gale comes out of lineage of figurative realism, most notably the Spanish realist painter Antonio Lopez Garcia, as well as painters associated with the figurative school of London, such as Lucian Freud. She brings to mind as well those artists who grapple with the visual as a source for phenomenological inquiry, such as Cezanne or Giacometti.
Media
Schedule
from January 07, 2015 to February 15, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-02-11 from 18:00 to 20:00