McHale does not seem interested in following either formalist or stylistic rules of any discernible kind, as if she were developing an encyclopedic grammar of paint’s intrinsic formal capacities rather than its descriptive ones. She wants to show what paint is, rather than what it can be made to do. McHale represents the human form within an infinitely changeable and remarkably permeable membrane. Her icons of paint and color don’t exist apart from the world – they embrace it.