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Plans and paintings arise in their own time like seeds that lie dormant then sprout and grow given the right conditions. This  is how I came to paint two young ballet dancers standing on a bench out in the wild in San Diego’s Mission Trails this last month.

Last December I was invited to see my neighbors two daughters dancing in the theatre in the San Diego Civic Youth Ballet’s Nutcracker ballet. My delighted response to the beauty and vitality of the young dancers  performance and  comment to their mother that I believed it no wonder that so many artists like Degas were drawn to paint dancers evidently planted a seed in my neighbors mind.

In the first weeks of self-isolation of the Coronavirus pandemic she called to ask whether I would be interested in painting her daughters in their ballet togs out in the open. I agreed to bring my pastels (preserving distance all the while) to a paint out in the open air. We met out on the edge of this suburb – on a path leading into Mission Trails.

It was a very memorable outing for all of us I think. It was so surprising seeing the girls in their pink ballet skirts and silk stockings out on the stony harsh California semi-desert trails.

The sense of being out of context was swiftly dispelled by the earnestness of the girls who clearly love the discipline of ballet and rigor of classical positioning irrespective of where they were. It was a soft overcast day. I sketched them alternately in a few  1 minute poses. I found myself lowering my eyeline to find out more about the contrast possible with the figure intersecting with the landscape horizon  - particularly looking at the space under the outstretched arms against the horizon.  

I have painted out in this preserve for many years. I am used to the  umber ochre and russets of the chaparral. On this  day after weeks of rain day though it was covered in fresh sprouting green  softening and complimenting the background for the young dancers in their pink skirts.

In the studio this past week I have worked on a few compositions from this brief encounter stirring of different thoughts.  Certainly there is the juxtaposition of orders of existence. The world of Ballet - a culturally protected form of dance originating in the Renaissance  projecting beings of grace and lightness capable of transcending gravity is contrasted with  the world of the wild, untamed,  hardy  scrub of the California coast.

I remember my own childhood and the attraction of the ballet. There is a photo of me on my confirmation day dressed in white posing with pointed foot  that made me remember the longing "to be". The ineffable draws one into in dance and into all the artistic expression. In music, theatre, dance, poetry the sense of a life  is affirmed. The image of the two girls  might  when resolved, remind us of grace, of extraordinary beauty , arouse the mixed feelings of longing and joy that all people need.

Perhaps I will go beyond the literal and make the dancers fly off into the sky next week. Why not? 

The virus cases are growing and now even the paths to the Mission Trails Park have been closed. I will offer the paintings (not quite Degas)  to the ballet girls  as a record of this time with my sincere wish that they should continue to dance through life whatever the circumstances!

Addendum April 18. Lift and Balance, 18x18