Larry Groff interviews painter Ann Gale about her work. Gale's paintings will be on view at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York in January.

Gale comments: "I am very curious and sometimes obsessive about observation … The search becomes part of the subject of the painting. The figure is so familiar, it is challenging to see past prejudged ideals of the body and face. Measuring can provide an objective lens for perception… Some of it is very much about the grid … I think it helps to measure against it. To see a gesture compared to a vertical is much more sensitive … Other things are not so much a grid but a linear movement where I’ll follow something that is like a ribbon through space. I think it’s the direction my eye is taking. I might go from the floor, over someone’s lap and into the background. I think of it as kind of a path through the painting and through the figure … As I’m observing, I’m trying not to follow the things with names, I’m trying to follow my way between them and through them … 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 and equally crucial to the process. Though the figures are abstracted through this process, they are not neutralized as subjects."