dancer with red cheek



2007
oil & acrylic on canvas
18 x 14"
46 x 36cm

Unlike my painting style, ballet is characterized by precision and technique. In my ballet series however, the objective was never to skillfully render feats of skill. What attracted me to ballet was not its methodic rigor or struggle for virtuosity but its flamboyance, stylization, and its unabashed and overblown emotionalism. These qualities, of course, are all too present in my art. Because of this basic shared vocabulary, it was not too difficult for me to understand the impassioned paralanguage of ballet and to reinterpret it in my own, somewhat twisted, visual vernacular.