Dancing with Masks

An exhibition at the Margate School Gallery, March 5-10, 2024. 

The idea of mask and dance has  inspired my art work. In this exhibition I show ceramic masks (decorative rather than theatrical) and paintings that have resulted from this stimulus. Many are semi stylized representations of mask with elements suggesting the varying rhythms of lively dance. Some are purely abstract; an attempt to capture in painting and expressive line a mood akin to the body in motion. Yet others are a playful exploration of the meaning of masking; its transformative power, its questioning of identity, its power to surprise and disguise, its humour and subversiveness, its connection with the divine and the eternal. For the ancient Greeks their word for mask: prosopon also meant ‘face’. In the words of T.S. Eliot:

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.

A selection of work from the exhibition is show below.