by Mark Van Proyen

In the first two decades of her career, it was often presumed that Ann Gale’s work should be appreciated in the historical context of Bay Area Figurative painting. But Gale has lived near Seattle that entire time, and her work has always been more responsive to other influences. Her aesthetic independence is borne out by the current exhibition of 16 recent paintings and two drawings. Of these, seven are large portrayals of (almost) full bodied figures, while the remaining dozen are smaller portrait heads.

Gloria Reclining, 2025 | Oil on canvas | 42 x 52 in

Two of the full figures, “Gloria Reclining” and “Robert Lying Down” are depicted nude, while the others, such as “Arch,” are pictured partially draped, sitting or slouching in chairs viewed from slightly elevated vantages. In all cases, we get the feeling that Gale is invested in revealing the deep psychology of the people whom she paints, even though they read as studio models. Some of the smaller works, such as “Portrait with Yellow Shirt,” come across as self-portraits, even though their titles represent theme merely as “Portraits” without naming the sitter.

Sami with Skirt, 2025 | Oil on canvas | 50 x 40 in

In the full figure paintings Gale describes hands and feet in a very abbreviated way, in several instances making them dissolute and indistinct. For example, in “Gloria Reclining” a corpulent woman wears a red head scarf lying on a yellow bed, her hands looking like palsied gloves, her feet extending beyond the left edge of the picture plane. In “Sami with Skirt” (2025), there is only the slightest indication of legs below the knee, although we can see that the model’s hands are visibly albeit awkwardly clutching one another. Oftentimes, the way that an artist describes hands symbolizes an attitude about how their personal world can be manipulated, while feet represent a psychological connection to the earth. Such subtleties enrich our understanding of the anxious impassivity enveloping Gale’s figures, who look as though they are waiting for something to happen to them. They are not joyous; indeed in many of the works, their pose of noble stoicism is on the verge of collapse. This impending fall is made particularly clear in some of the smaller head and neck portraits, such as “Shawna with Orange Sweater” or “Portrait with Gold Curtain.”

Portrait with Gold Curtain, 2025 | Oil on masonite | 14 x 11 in

Such nuances are conveyed in the way Gale paints. Her palette bespeaks the muted hues of an east coast October, enlivened by strategic insertions of lush, bright color. Her images are built from layers of perpendicular grey and umber brushwork whose fluctuating quality coalesces and surges forward at those points where the figures are most precisely articulated. It is as if her figures are captured in an early state of dissolution, progressing from physical solidity to disembodied information. The paintings consistently skew the normal relationship between mass and volume. 

Portrait with Yellow Shirt, 2023 | Oil on linen | 14 x 11 inches

Many of the influences in Gale’s paintings point to London. Their impasto treatment of solitary figures brings the work of Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach to mind. She also shares the objectivity and fleshiness of Jenny Saville’s figures, although Gale’s are not as overwhelming, monstrous, or frightening, at least not in such an obviously theatrical manner. They are frightening more in the way of Alberto Giacometti’s figures, as emblems of existential disquiet looking ahead to outright crisis. They also harken back to Rembrandt’s late self-portraits in the way that they reveal the precarious mortality of their subjects, imprisoned by their own stoicism while realizing that the tragedy of life is found in the world’s pervasive indifference to narcissistic self-absorption. The thematic undercurrent that gives Gale’s work its psychological gravitas is thus revealed, an infrequent attribute in a supercilious art world that too often whistles its way past a mounting political catastrophe.