Passacaille: Red Shoes and White Stockings, 2024

I was very drawn to this elegant, lively Baroque dance performed by Svetlana Mednis to the beautiful music of the 17th-century French opera Amide, by Jean Baptiste-Lully.

My wife, who likes to dance, watched the videos I supplied and she undertook to repeat the steps in a cherished pair of red Anello & Davide shoes. I observed this, sequentially photographed it, and made notes and drawings to produce this painting.

The work consists of a Rowney Cryla acrylic base coat of burnt orange; then opaque pigments are used to lay down the undercoating of some of the subject matter. Acrylic paint is then used in washes, thinned with diluted Liquidex airbrush medium. This layering of the work allows for subtle tonal attributes that give depth and intensity. The overall result is an acrylic painting with a degree of luminosity rather than the usual flat acrylic finish.