Lily Koto Olive reviews the exhibition Alice Neel: Late Portaits & Still Lifes at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, on view through June 23, 2012.

Olive writes that "the interior lives of [Neel's] subjects peer out at us from within their surfaces. Neel's uncanny ability to capture her subjects psychological states in the moments they sat in front of her reads intensely in person. The personalities reveal themselves through Neel's fluid handling of paint; stories unfolding, lives and past moments cascading into the present. I immediately wanted to know more about the lives of the people she was surrounded by."