Ballet - Vivaldi The Four Seasons:Autumn Print

Fresco is an ancient painting technique. The world fresco comes from the Italian meaning 'fresh'. The technique consists of painting with dry pigment mixed with water applied to a wet surface of lime mortar or plaster. The painting (or section thereof) has to be finished before the surface dries, which occurs in a matter of hours. This also makes fresco 'fresh' in that there is only one chance to execute the painting properly - there is no way to do it over except by doing another. I believe that fresco is the best way to capture motion, especially the motion of a moving human body. Fresco also seems very musical to me. It seems therefore a natural choice of medium when it came time for me to do these works about ballet. I have performed in a student ballet performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. From my memories of that experience I made this work. Painting this fresco was much like that live performance: there was no chance of a do-over. The work itself is to be 'read' from right to left and from left to right(it meets in the center):the idea is to give the feeling of movement on a stage. Dance is another way of understanding our life. Everyday we live on 'Life's stage'. Every moment of our life is spent as if performing in front of an audience.