Virtual Artist Talk: Ann Gale, April 22

Thursday, April 22, 6:30 p.m.

Presented by the Figge Art Museum

An award-winning talent praised by art critic DeWitt Cheng for her “densely worked, emotionally charged paintings” that “manifestly rebut any resistance to painterly realism,” Washington-based painter Ann Gale will be featured in the Figge Art Museum's latest Virtual Artist Talk, her April 22 appearance highlighting her works, her creative process, and figurative painting in the present day.

With her gifts currently on display in the Figge's exhibition For America: 200 Years of Painting from the National Academy of Design, Gale is best-known for her complex and expressive oil paintings of individuals. A figurative painter based in Seattle, she received her BFA from the Rhode Island College in 1988 and her MFA from Yale University in 1991, and is a Full Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Washington School of Art, currently teaching painting and drawing. Admired for her portraits, which consist of an accumulation of small color patches expressing the changing light and shifting positions of her models over time, Gale works from live models and her process is lengthy. Once the artist begins to paint, she generally works for three-hour sessions, and takes anywhere from four months to two years to complete a painting. Gale's pieces possess a strong psychological component due to the amount of time she spends with her models, and while her portraits, as she states, are not always technically “accurate” to the subjects they're based upon, they are based on Gale's current perceptions of the subject. The picture she paints, for instance, may change midway through the painting process if Gale notices a change in the subject's posing.

With her numerous awards including the Western States Art Federation/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Gale also received an Academy of Arts and Letters Museum Purchase Award and is an Academician of the National Academy of Art and Design in New York. In addition, Gale’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States, including solo exhibitions at: San Francisco's Dolby Chadwick Gallery; New York's Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects; the University of Virginia's Fralin Art Museum; the Portland Art Museum; and the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Ann Gale's Virtual Artist Talk is free, but advance registration is required, and participants will receive an e-mail with a Zoom link two hours before the program begins at 6:30 p.m. on April 22. For more information on the event, call (563)326-7804 and visit FiggeArtMuseum.org.