by Nora Buchanan

An hour after noon, the white walls of Dolby Chadwick Gallery in San Francisco are illuminated through a spectacular wall of glass. Still, upon entrance to the gallery this month, it is clear that Ann Gale’s collection of oil paintings is the most exquisite view above Post Street.

Gloria Blue Band, 2022 | Oil on canvas | 46 x 40 inches

Gale’s work as a figurative painter is mesmerizing. “Arch,” (2022) catches the eye in the gallery’s left corner; the subject is posed nude, hunched without force — her breasts naturally fall, and gaze rests just beyond the reach of the canvas. Gale’s style is distinct: like expressive pixels or a view from behind rain-drenched windows. Her brush strokes are disconnected and exceptionally precise; each shadow, wrinkle and splotch of light is captured, yet thousands of isolated, unblended paint marks render each portrait.

Distance is Gale’s most valuable variable: In squints and steps away, her relationship with value is perfect, while in scrutinizing, close looks, the talent which underpins it is even more clear. Her work is made up of individual color blotches; when inches away from the canvas, the unblemished blues, greens, neon pinks, bright oranges, grays and purples that make up her faces are geometrically revealed. 

This style allows Gale to obscure her subject while highlighting them in pixelated intimacy. A ribbon held by the subject is rendered in three or four black painted lines, while her face is about a thousand tiny dots — anchored by a black pinprick that communicates where her line of vision falls. As viewers we recognize bedsheets and bulging stomachs — the skin of these people is palpable even from behind Gale’s watery gaze.

The cohesion of this collection feeds its physicality. Gale’s models, with whom she has kept close working relationships with over the years, are recognizable from piece to piece. In “Robert Lying Down” (2025) Robert lays naked on a bed, glancing down the bed toward the viewer; in “Robert Reclining” (2025) Gale frames only his face and neck. Through this continual representation, the model becomes a real person, a subject captured not just in one moment of rest but with imagined interpersonal moments between.

In “Gloria Blue Band” (2022), the most defined element of the work is Gloria’s pupil; this singular white reflection on her eye is the key to this portrait’s unflinching realism. Gale’s level of observation sees the world with every hue it possesses, from the variations of grey inside fabric folds and to the screaming oranges of ear cavities. Perhaps she aims to expose some deeper emotional truth about the subject, or perhaps her “through wet glass” style simply toggles between transformation and perfect realism.

The truth lies somewhere in everyone’s individual perception. Gale’s models are indeed a vehicle to display her perfectly foggy style of representation. Are these moments private? We still see the outlines of genitalia, the pinks and darks of female nipples, the hints at pubic hair. These are humans depicted in nude vulnerability, sure, but not in weakness. With independent marks of paint, Gale shows fingertips, closed eyes, the darkened palms of hands. The lives of these people are, even in posed portraits, blushingly clear.

Her subjects are depicted in moments of their own stillness: posed in chairs and upon beds. When painting, Gale marks her own feet to ensure her physical placement toward the model does not change. Therefore, the only thing that does transform the model’s physical existence to the canvas — that we nearly press our nose to — is not Gale’s perspective, but her unique hand.

In this collection, Gale proves her capability as a figurative painter. She turns millions of sovereign strokes to windows into the warmth that is always present in the human body, however posed and painted it is.

“Ann Gale" at Dolby Chadwick Gallery will be up until Nov. 1.