Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting talk to painter Susanna Coffey at her exhibition Elemental at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York, on view through February 9, 2014.

Asked about her more abstract recent paintings Coffey remarks: "It's all figure painting, it's the only thing I do… They're about the figure, they're portraits, and that's what they're about. So, while the image is abstracted and might be thought of as modernist abstraction, at the end of the day they're calling in a way that a portrait can call for an 'I, thou' moment. They're more outward, they're not asking to be looked at, they're asking for a relationship… This is a kind of space which is constructed to move out rather than in."