dance of the earth, oil on canvas, 200 x 180cm, 2017
Sharing its title with Stravinsky’s final movement to Part One, Dance of the Earth’s influence is in reality much wider, evolving as a response to the music of the whole of Part One (The Kiss of the Earth (later Adoration of the Earth)) and incorporating a variety of external influences.
Adopting an earthy, bass-note palette, here the dance has been subsumed within a deep elemental ground. Figurative ‘suggestions’ emerge and recede from the warm sgrafittoed surface preserving a connection with the physical, human landscape. The result is an affecting tumult of earth, a grounded cosmogony which is at once a celebration of the earth, a reminder of our connection with it, and a lament at the imminent death of winter.
Adopting an earthy, bass-note palette, here the dance has been subsumed within a deep elemental ground. Figurative ‘suggestions’ emerge and recede from the warm sgrafittoed surface preserving a connection with the physical, human landscape. The result is an affecting tumult of earth, a grounded cosmogony which is at once a celebration of the earth, a reminder of our connection with it, and a lament at the imminent death of winter.