Kyle Staver is a visual storyteller and expert choreographer, with a seemingly infinite imagination. An exhibition of her work is always exciting, but her current show at Half Gallery, up through Feb. 7, has an added pleasure, as the gallery’s secondary exhibition space, an annex just down the block, gives us a glimpse into Kyle’s working process. Though the relatively loose paint handling of her large paintings suggests a certain freedom, these paintings actually grow out of a long preparatory process. Beginning with fast pencil sketches to find basic ideas, she then moves to wash drawings for the overall distribution of lights and darks, clay reliefs to give a sense of physical reality to the still-forming image, and watercolors for understanding how color might come into play. Finally, as the wonderful second exhibition in Half Gallery’s annex space demonstrates, she works out the ultimate construction in small oil sketches on board, where forms seem to spontaneously emerge from the gestural movements of her brush. I recommend first spending time in the gallery’s main space, where her large paintings live. Delve into their fairy-tale worlds of Prince Charming, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Feel their charm, but also see how our own contemporary life of real relationships, so different from the Victorian-cleansed fables we grew up with, lurks just below the happy surface. Enjoy these paintings for their dramatic lighting, surprising color combinations, subtle repetitions of repeating motifs, condensed spaces, unusual scale shifts and imaginative compositions. Experience Kyle’s clear joy at the making of these paintings. Then head down to the annex, where you’ll find the large paintings in miniature, in the oil sketches of fast brushstrokes and organic movement, where elements seem to be born from the movement of paint, and most of the details, albeit less distinctly defined, found in the large paintings have already been conceived.