Joyous Dancing Figures

Joyous Dancing Figures
Pencil on watercolour paper
© Joyce Woolfe
Date unknown

Poppy Girl
21 x 21cm
Pencil on Canson sketching paper
© Cherry Jeffs 2014

As artists, we like to think we're unique but sometimes the apple doesn't fall as far from the tree as we might imagine.

Whilst doing the bittersweet task of sorting through hundreds of Mum's joyful sketches and paintings last month, I came across these figures of dancers which she must have cut out from a bigger piece the progress of which she wasn't happy with. I tucked them into the pocket of my sketchbook and brought them home with me.

As a child, I would often ask my Mum to 'draw me a girl' which was my shorthand for getting her to sit down with a pencil or pen and conjure up a figure from her imagination. Mum's unrfulfilled dream was to be a fashion designer and the enchanting drawings were reminiscent of fashion illustrations from the forties.

I longed to be able to do my own figure drawings with such flair. I would spend hours in my room, drawing figures over and over in the hope of achieving something like the same proficiency but it was many many years later, as I delved further and further into my imagination for my artistic imagery, that 'my' figures began to emerge.

In the studio the other day, looking from Mum's drawings to my sketches of dancing figures for my current series, the saying about apples Mum was so fond of, came forcefully back to me. 

More About the Influences of Dance and Fashion in Art

• Fashion as a source for creative cross-fertilization
• John Singer Sargent amazing Spanish dance sketches