The work of sculptor, painter, and draftswoman Mary Frank has typically been described as poetic and interior, an encrypted iconography with dark intimations of her tumultuous life experiences. In fact, Ms. Frank, from her earliest works in clay to her most recent effort in encaustic, has never lost interest in creating recognizable forms. These archetypal figures — the running horse, the empty boat, and, most important, the human body and face — are all of a common visual language that has traveled to our present-day culture from the world of the ancients and beyond. What’s interesting about their appearance in Ms. Frank’s art is how meaning is conveyed not through narrative, but through the artist’s vigorous making of her art. An exhibition of Ms. Frank’s most recent paintings, and a remarkable collection of more than 50 portrait drawings, is now on view at the DC Moore Gallery. Its title, “The Near Far,” not only references the spatial paradoxes Ms. Frank likes to create in her paintings, but also suggests the complicated emotional terrain of her oeuvre.

Now approaching 75, Ms. Frank has been a critically applauded artist since her first solo exhibitions in the early 1960s. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of both the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she has been the subject of many solo exhibitions both here and outside of New York City. Ms. Frank first gained recognition as a sculptor of monumental “earth women,” which she created out of clay and embedded into the landscape. These figures, often displayed supine with legs and arms splayed open, established Ms. Frank as an unabashed explorer of female sexuality and vulnerability.

Later in life, Ms. Frank transitioned from sculpture into painting. But, as her work at DC Moore demonstrates, she never abandoned the tactile pleasures of shaping and penetrating her materials. Ms. Frank’s paintings approach relief and, in at least one work, a molded figure does spring forth from the canvas support. In most paintings, though, dense layers of acrylic paint are manipulated with a palette knife or raked with a clay-modeling tool. Pieces of collage may be embedded into the viscous paint, which is variously smeared, incised, or scumbled. Brushes do some of the work, but the overall appearance is one of an artist continually seeking more intimate contact with her surfaces while never abandoning her commitment to contour. Her encaustic paintings on panel share a smooth, lustrous, milky white ground, reminiscent of marble, on which she etches figures and forms colored in vibrant hues. Her figures are lithe and graceful with long, flowing hair. “Young Leaf” depicts a running man, his forward leg stained with the deep green of a large leaf beneath his feet. In another panel, a torqued nude figure appears to hover in midair, his twisted form rising above the bluish-red ground beneath him — or is he falling? The work’s title, “Did You Ever?,” refuses to explain further.

Ms. Frank uses color generously and luxuriously, which makes her work seen collectively a visual delight. With its pale fresco washes, acid Day-Glo, and splendorous minerals, Ms. Frank’s palette is inspired by a diverse and historically rich range of sources, from ancient Egyptian wall painting to postwar Pop art. Her colors also reflect her close observations of the natural world: flower petals, animal fur, water, and air. Thematically, Ms. Frank’s territory is the psychological, but while she aims to provoke strong emotional responses, she is less interested in affixing them to a single narrative. The large acrylic painting, “Abide,” presents the idealized pale face of a young woman with full lips and wide-set almond eyes. She is larger than life and surrounded by glowing yellow paint. Beside her is a much smaller figure of a boy, painted in vibrant green. He extends his left arm to gently rest over the forehead of the giant woman’s face, a tender gesture that unites the widely disparate scales of the two forms. The reasons why remain obscure; what matters to Ms. Frank is not the narrative potential of the two figures, but their emotional resonance.

In contrast to her figurative painting, Ms. Frank’s portrait drawings are detailed and descriptive. Many of the faces on view are of friends and family, drawn from life or from memory. Ms. Frank also includes her studies of faces from well-known works of old masters such as Velázquez, Rembrandt, and Botticelli, as well as imagined faces and blurred monoprints of hidden faces. Many of the portraits are combined with still-life elements, a flower or a book. Other faces emerge through the bold outline of animal heads. In one particularly dramatic example, a fiery red buffalo charges through the broad, chiseled face of a man. Ms. Frank says that, in her portraiture, she aims to capture “the music, topography, and climate of the human face.” She is a forceful and somewhat fierce draftswoman. Her faces are realistic, but because of her empathy for her subjects, she avoids brutal realism. Ms. Frank, who studied modern dance with the legendary Martha Graham before embarking on her career in the visual arts, knows well that the full expressive force of the body can only be realized through the fearless physical exertion of the artist. The charged surfaces of Ms. Frank’s paintings and drawings are similarly intensely physical works. The artist’s presence is palpable and, indeed, poetic.

Until February 9 (724 Fifth Ave. at 57th Street, 212-247-2111).