Preparatory Study (2004)
Oil on board, 51x36cm
Private collection
This painting is very much a preparatory study after the event, rather like the supporting work for an A Level art exam, where one decides what to do first, then does sketches to work up to it. This trompe l'oeil collage shows some of the original material that I worked from for the ballet series commission, particularly the painting of Swanilda, from Coppelia. At the top of the composition is a photocopy from a book on George Balanchine with a photograph of Suzanne Farrell in a production of Don Quixote. By removing the figure of Balanchine I arrived at the central image, which I then painted from, translating the black and white photograph into colour, and the image of the finished painting is in the bottom right-hand corner. There is also the section of the score that went into the painting, a swatch of the four colours used for each of the four characters that appeared in the paintings, and thumbnail sketches on the back of the proverbial envelope.
©copyright 2005 Nicholas Middleton