Figures: Mace loves painting the human figure above all. Nowadays he works mostly from sketches, preferring gesture poses with vitality and interesting angles over inert long term poses. He never uses photographs anymore, and often paints whole figures from his imagination—an ability he says he got from attending life drawing workshops on a regular basis. “Drawing gestures from the live model is the aerobics of art,” Mace says. “It’s tai chi with a pencil.”