Performers series

This is a portrait of my old friend John Livingston, then principal dancer with Culture Device Dance Project, London. 

John had a unique way of finding poses during our session, in that he improvised dance in the studio, periodically freezing in the middle of a movement as I sketched in charcoal. Once finding a pose we were both happy with, and which John felt he could hold for a couple of hours, we moved on to this much larger picture. 

This process, together with earlier portrait work with Rosalind Brooks of Earthfall, inspired my ongoing fascination with painting dancers, and led to the development of some of the improvisational techniques we often employ in our collaborations.