Fire Dance. Limited edition of 15 screenprints on paper.

2021

A companion piece for last year’s Cosmic Dancer screenprint, this print also started as a charcoal drawing of a dancer in the midst of a move. Here the image is a close-up of a bust, a half raised arm, and the back of a head dissolving into the darkness.

I also used a split fountain technique here, using a mix of yellows, reds, oranges and pinks together to print a fiery silhouette, followed by a halftoned black layer adding volume on the upper body and filling in the rest of the print with a black overlay.

After working on a number of prints with upwards of 6 layers, I expected this work to be an easy one to create, an interlude before going back to multilayered project but it wasn’t so. The first layer worked very well, and there is so much fun in printing a split fountain layer, seeing the colours blend and mix, creating waves and merging into lovely hues of pinks and oranges. The black layer, however, gave me a lot of trouble- literally everything that could go wrong did, and it took me three sessions to finish printing it.

So here is this lonely dancer, borne out of fun and difficulties, this red-hot body forever frozen in the middle of a grand salute.