Four Ballet Dancers Daily Painting #8

This Painting is SOLD.

Daily Painting #8

September 25, 2007

‘Four Ballet Dancers’ is painted in oil on a 9”x12” unframed canvas. I always seem to forget just how much I love to paint in oils, but then I start a new oil painting and remember…. There is something about oils that is just magical. I don’t know what it is but its like silk. The paints feel so fluid, thick like honey and never seem to dry up. There is no hurry to finish a painting when you are working in oil because the palette will stay wet for many hours without needing to replenish paint. Of course the set back from oils is that it won’t dry on the canvas for a fresh layer of paint to go right on top of it minutes later like with acrylics. This is something an artist must wait days for in oils. But since this is a daily painting, you just have to go with the flow and deal with the fact the paint is sopping wet. Wet on wet paint. Again, ZERO control. ☺

I picked the image of the four dancers because I’ve been thinking of the lines of the song, For A Dancer by Jackson Brown. If you don’t know them… read on:

Just do the steps you’ve been shown
By everyone you’ve ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed someone else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
Somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go home
Because in the end, there is one dance you’ll do alone.

For many years in junior high and high school I used to dance in a dance company with my friends. We did ballet, tap and jazz dancing. It was such a big part of my life. I guess you could say, ‘Once a dancer, always a dancer’. Although I don’t take dance classes anymore, I still get so excited when I see others on stage dancing. It takes me back to all the great times of my group, In Motion.

The inspiration for The Four Ballet Dancers was a photograph I found online. This is my artistic expression of it.

Thank you to those who’ve emailed me photographs of your own for consideration for future paintings. I really appreciate it and I encourage you to continue to do it. I am open to anything. If you think it would make a great painting PLEASE send it my way. I will consider all images and also give you a referral to whatever you are working on in my emails, web page & blogs of that painting.

The link to my eBay store is
http://stores.ebay.com/Gayles-Paintings

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS PAINTING WAS CREATED IN OILS. IT WILL NOT SHIP UNTIL 2-3 WEEKS AFTER THE AUCTION IS OVER WHEN IT HAS DRIED COMPLETELY.

Don’t forget ‘Tree in Autumn’ and ‘LOVE #7’ are still available for a few more days on the auction block!

And of course my web page is
http://www.gaylespaintings.com

Peace & blessings,
Gayle Etcheverry