Ann Gale: An Immersion of Figure and Environment

You do not have to read many of my blog posts or listen to more than a few podcast episodes to understand the deep curiosity I have for figural works, especially in paintings. Ann Gale’s oil on canvas painting, “Babs with Ribbons,” (2007) stopped me in my tracks, one of the works showcased in the exhibition, “For America: Paintings from the National Academy of Design” at the New Britain Museum of American Art. A contemporary artist and graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, I was also able to layer my looking experience with a deeper understanding of her artistic process.

The woman in the painting, sitting in an armchair, her slumping shoulders weigh heavily in the hands buried in her lap, appears to be one with her surroundings. The drab brown and beige color patches dabbled with pinks and reds spread across the despondent expression across her face. The entire canvas is an accumulation of color and expressive patches that capture the change of light and the atmosphere throughout the landscape of the canvas. Gale calls them color environment, “the detailed color patches powerfully express the changes in light and the movement of the figure in time.” A tangible tension is created in her process, resulting in fragments that are psychologically-charged. As my eye (and I even my body shifted) moves throughout the landscape of both the environment and her physique, I experience also light in a tangible and textured way.

This sense of immediacy is achieved through a lengthy artistic process of an extensive series of long sessions with her live models. I learned that in her process of spending an abundant amount of time with her models, physical discomfort sets in resulting in and exposing from her sitter a palpable tension and a profound intimacy. “Babs with Ribbons” portrait is raw and revealing and yet breathtaking. Gale’s exploration of the body and the structure of space through color and light is an immersive process that immerses me, the viewer into the faraway place of my sitter’s gaze, drenched in the sensations of color.