Mel Leipzig, an acclaimed figurative painter whose passion for detail transformed depictions of fellow New Jerseyans in mundane settings into mesmerizing enigmas, died on Nov. 1 in Princeton, NJ. He was 90.

The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote in 1979 that Mr. Leipzig’s “sense of mysterious emotional tensions in strongly characterized ordinary people makes him, perhaps, the Chekhov of Trenton, referring to the Russian dramatist who revealed the melancholy interior lives of his subjects.

“Painting has saved my life,” he said in the Painting Perception interview in 2018. “There’s so much in this life that you cannot control. I lost my wife — it was very hard for me, but because I paint, I could get through it. Painting is unbelievable in how it can help.

“Creativity is very life-giving. Van Gogh would have shot himself a lot earlier had he not been an artist.”