Much has and will be made about the pure, raw imagery of Dana Schutz, who just had a mid-career survey open up at the Miami Art Museum, a Knight Arts grantee . The show came originally from the Neuberger Museum in New York. There is the painting with the head eating its own face (and several more self-devouring portraits); the painfully pink colored last man on earth; the woman giving birth. There’s the woman trying to smoke, cry and swim at the same time. And that one of Michael Jackson’s autopsy.

But once you get over the sometimes startling narratives, what really jumps out is the mastery of painting that Schutz has. Huge swaths of color and brush strokes that are so seductive, they make you want to keep coming back. All of a sudden, the terribly sunburned man on a beach becomes a study in color and composition. The decomposing body of one of the world’s greatest and most eccentric singers, while disturbing, takes on another dimension when looking at it for the palette and the framing.

For a native of a suburb of Detroit who now lives in Brooklyn, her color schemes are amazingly, brashly tropical. That dim light, suggesting a permanent winter glaze, is absent here. But the subject matter is intense. The artist, who has impressed the art world in the United States and Europe during the last decade, was on hand for the opening and said she didn’t really consider her work grotesque or depressing. With that in mind, the paintings — mostly large — take on a more abstract quality, in that they are more pieces of subjects rather than the realistic portrayal of anyone or anything. They are almost body parts, segments of a life, and there seems to be fun in their creations. So don’t shy away. Following on the heels of a well-received show from Faith Ringgold, MAM is delivering another opportunity to see an artist who knows what she is doing, and how.

Dana Schutz: “If the Face Had Wheels,” through Feb. 26 at the Miami Art Museum, 101 W. Flagler St., Miami; miamiartmuseum.org.