Anne Ryan paints images that look like stills from old Westerns or period films. The color, cropping, and arrangement of figures have an unmistakably cinematic theatricality and sense of unfolding narrative. Using thin watercolor-like washes, Ryan applies the paint in translucent layers, but despite the artist’s sparse application of paint, the images capture a dramatic sense of light and melodramatic weight. Ryan’s stiff, emotionally isolated figures and tense atmosphere recall Edward Hopper’s figure paintings from the 1940s.