Gail Ragains compares her style of painting to the improvisations of a jazz musician. She begins each paintings with a strong foundation of color and abstracts it in the subsequent layers of paint. She considers herself an extremely physical and expressive painter. She states, “The more I can move and dance around the canvas, the more connected I am to the painting.” Her use of bold, gestural brushstrokes and colors puts her work In line with the history of Abstract Expressionism. Yet her depiction of the human body evokes the style and subject of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Gail Ragains lives and works out of Redwood City, near San Francisco. She has exhibited her work in multiple solo shows throughout the Bay Area and group shows in California, Boston, and Canada. In 2012, San Francisco Magazine featured her as one of the “Eight Artists to Watch.”