Dance!

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For almost as long as there has been painting, there have been paintings of dancers and people dancing. There are 9,000-year-old cave paintings of dancers in India, 5,000-year-old paintings of Egyptian dancers. Painters throughout the ages have sought to capture the movement, music and joy of dance in paint.

Members of the Federation of British Artists are no different, and here is a collection of contemporary paintings of Dancers from The Figurative Art Fair

View The Figurative Art Fair

Charles Williams NEAC Old People Dancing Oil on canvas £1,500

"Old People Dancing was an image that seemed to emerge unbidden while I was painting. I don't know why: it was about a month before the recent pandemic, so perhaps it was some kind of premonition." Charles Williams NEAC

Chris Bennett ROI Blue Girls II Oil on panel £3,600

Aimee Birnbaum RI Moving As One Watercolour embossed £800

"Moving As One is an embossed watercolour.  It is part of my series of dancers in perpetual motion. It is a metaphor for how we are with each other, reacting and balancing. My own dance training helps me to imagine the figures released from the normal constraint of gravity." Aimee Birnbaum RI

Aimee Birnbaum RI Spring Revelry Watercolour & etching £500

"Spring Revelry is about expressing a release of energy and life force, after a long period of hibernation." Aimee Birnbaum RI

Peter Clossick NEAC Degas Sculpture, Dancer Looking at the Sole of her Right Foot Pen & ink on paper £400

Tessa Coleman NEAC Robert The Dancer Oil on cradled gesso panel £4,500

"Robert is the most elegant of life models, as a professional dancer, he is extraordinarily lithe and flexible and holds a pose with impeccable grace. This is the quality I aimed to capture in this painting of Robert, done in the company of three other painter friends over the course of four painting sessions. It was one of those paintings that fell into place quite naturally, the fineness of Robert’s bone structure and his supple and upright pose reflected in the elegance of the house plants that he is nestled behind.

Painting fabric folds and patterns is not the specialist subject is used to be now that everyone wears jeans, but working out how to paint Robert’s kaftan reminded me of the airy Philip Pearlstein portrait of Linda Nochlin and Richard Pommer I saw a couple of years ago in New York. In the painting Linda Nochlin is wearing a blue and white geometric patterned dress and Philip Pearlstein has painted the folds of the material and the fall of light so precisely, yet with such lightness of touch: paint and fabric at the same time, hard to do and wonderful to look at." Tessa Coleman NEAC 

Ian Cook RI Rehearsal Steps Oil & acrylic £850

"A novice dancer makes tentative strategies on the dance floor, pointing her foot in the pattern of aesthetic hopscotch, visible only to her." Ian Cook RI

Raymond Leech RSMA Arabesque Oil £1,875

Julian Bailey NEAC Bather, Tasmania Oil £4,200

Can you spot the paintings of Singer and Musicians in The Figurative Art Fair

View The Figurative Art Fair

The Figurative Art Fair is the only exclusively online art fair for the finest contemporary representational art.

Presented by the Federation of British Artists, The Figurative Art Fair features 248 works for sale by around 100 elected members of the country’s leading national art societies, including:

  • The Pastel Society (PS)
  • Royal Society of British Artists (RBA)
  • Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI)
  • Royal Society of Portrait Painters (RP)
  • New English Art Club (NEAC)
  • Royal Society of Marine Artists (RSMA)
  • Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA)
  • Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI)

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Exhibition Admission is usually £5. If you enjoy viewing the exhibition online, and could consider making a donation to help us through this period of closure, any amount would be greatly appreciated.

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