Years spent sketching dancers in a Calgary ballet studio resulted in captivating images from a local artist that will be on display this weekend.
More than a dozen portraits and figurative drawings from Turner Valley artist Gordon Milne’s extensive exhibit Painting en pointe – a celebration of movement in dance - were selected for display for the Alberta Ballet Studio’s 50th Anniversary celebration in the Nat Christie Centre May 26 to 28.
“To go into those studios and draw those dancers and see what they do throughout the day, from training to the productions they’re putting on, to say is inspirational is kind of trite, but it truly is,” he said.
“The devotion and integrity and just the sheer beauty of what they do is phenomenal to me and I never get tired of it.”
Milne has been visiting the dance studio almost every Tuesday morning for 17 years and has captured the ballet dancers in various movements in close to 50 paintings and drawings.
He says it’s his favourite day of the week.
“I’ve loved dance my whole life and I’ve loved the athleticism of it,” he said. “When I was going Tuesday mornings I was trying to capture a feeling of the movement of the dancers. I began trying to paint the dancers using the gestural sort of imagery.”
The paintings and drawings with more movement represent figurative expressions of dance movements, with some in a sequence of positions overlapping one another.
“I’m trying to portray that it’s not one static position the dancer holds, it’s part of a series of movements,” he said. “I’m interested in not just the end position that most people recognize but the whole sequence and trying to paint a sequence of movement in a two dimensional format is challenging.”
Many of Milne’s pieces depict bright and colourful portraits of the dancers using distinctive lines and shapes.
“When I’m doing portraits I try very hard to get a sense of the colours that surround them, the colours they like and the colours they project as a personal aura and use those colours,” he said.
“I’m more interested in using the colours as an effect as opposed to the extension of the personality.”
Colour is an important component of depicting movement, Milne said.
“I try to be as bold and experimental as I can with it,” he said. “I try to use that colour in connection with the shapes I select to translate that into a sense of movement. The colours actually become visually part of the movement and help to lead your eye through the painting.”
Those planning to view Milne’s exhibit at the Alberta Ballet Studios have the opportunity to see the Foothills artist at work. On May 26, he will do live paintings of Alberta Ballet dancers Taryn Nowels and Melissa Eguchi.
“It was opportunistic this year because of their 50th anniversary,” he said.
“The artistic director and I have been throwing this idea back and forth for a couple of years now.”
Milne started out studying printmaking and sculpture at McMaster University.
During his early career, Milne worked as a printmaker producing original etchings, woodcuts, linocuts and mixed media drawings.
“I reached a point in the late ’90s where I was dissatisfied with what I was doing and I started to paint,” he said. “I had no training in painting at all. It gave me the leeway to approach it the way I wanted to approach it.”
Rather than turn to landscapes as many new painters do, Milne immediately focused on sports.
In the late ’90s, Milne began his Canadian Sports Heroes Collection, a series of large-scale portraits of Canadian Olympians.
“I began approaching some of the athletes living in the area like Diane Jones and Willie de Wit,” he said.
The Canadian Sports Heroes Collection was unveiled at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and is on display in Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in Calgary. In addition, Milne’s Sport Legacy Collection, a series of six painting, hangs in the Calgary International Airport.
During the past two decades, Milne has concentrated on dance and his 2014 exhibit Immersion: Paintings of Dance & Dancers, which explores the similarities between high performance athletes and elite dancers, is also on display at Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
“It was a natural progression for me with the athleticism involved in dance to move in that direction,” he said. “I can watch dance all day. My wife and I are season subscribers for many years at Alberta Ballet.”
For more details go to gordonmilneart.com/announcements.html
