ARTIST STATEMENT
Like no one is watching communicates strength and joy in living without conformity. Inspired by my disciplined experience in ballet training, this painting is a self-portrait of dancing unreservedly at the serene Bunya Mountains. In reaching toward the viewer, it is an expression of freedom and joy in dance, it is a gift from me to you. This painting is a metaphor for shedding the rigid structures that dictate how one lives, where some trade their life for systems that are to bring success, there is a freedom in detaching these expectations and expressing from the heart.
ARTWORK PROCESS
I enlisted the assistance of my brother in taking the photos for this artwork and selected one that best evoked my concept. The image was projected on the canvas and sketched over for accuracy, I also constructed the frame that sits around the painting. Influence was drawn from Edgar Degas’ Dancers in pink, an artwork that was hung in my last ballet studio, through the impressionist style of the background and the movement of the brushstrokes. The impressionist style also implies a rejection of overly structured methods of creativity due to the impressionist’s rejection of academic depictions of history
