I’ve been dancing all my life.  When I was almost five, my mom enrolled me in my first ballet class, and for years after I took ballet, tap and even Spanish dancing, then jazz classes as an adult.  My husband and I took ballroom and disco lessons in the 70’s and early 80’s and were regulars at the Fan Club in Boston.  We still dance whenever possible, so perhaps that explains why I would want to paint dancers.

I like to fill the frame in my paintings and often crop my images to do so, thinking that a partial image can sometimes tell the whole story.  I also like to use multiple canvases, so my first tango painting became a happy accident.  I sketched an image of tango dancers on two canvases, thinking I’d make it a diptych, perhaps even non-linear.  Instead, as I kept looking at the sketch, I realized that the legs alone—entwined, flicking, dragging, kicking—were all I needed to express the emotions of the dance.  The tango is, after all, a sexy dance, a dance of love, incorporating sensuality, aggression, and surrender in every routine.  Since my first tango series, I have painted many individual poses, expanding my views to include torsos on larger canvasses.  Perhaps my next tango painting will  go even further…

Close Encounter