Contemporary painters are increasingly drawn to dance as a source of artistic inspiration, creating a dynamic intersection between two seemingly opposite art forms. While dance is ephemeral and constantly in motion, painting traditionally captures static, enduring moments. However, this contrast has sparked a rich creative dialogue that builds on a historical foundation established by artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, who collaborated extensively with choreographers such as Trisha Brown and Merce Cunningham in the late 20th century.
Today's artists are finding innovative approaches to capture dance's energy through figurative and abstract forms, direct collaboration with choreographers, and the development of their own physical practices alongside traditional canvas work. Nigerian painter Jethro King Oluwatosin exemplifies this trend, having been a dancer since childhood and winning competitions at birthday parties. His artistic practice took a new direction during a 2024 artist residency in Abuja, Nigeria, where daily movement became a shared ritual with other artists and dancers.
This experience led King Oluwatosin to perform as part of "The Awakening" exhibition at Odama Gallery in Lagos, featuring choreography rooted in Yoruba cultural movements that emphasized free flow and ancestral guidance. He subsequently created a series of figurative paintings depicting his own dancing body, decorated with symbols and patterns from Yoruba culture. Working from both photographs that captured his body's shapes in motion and embodied memories that informed his color choices, he used azure blues and bright greens to reflect the emotions experienced while dancing.
London-based artist and former fashion designer Luella Bartley discovered similar limitations in traditional documentation methods when invited to observe rehearsals with renowned British choreographer Sir Wayne McGregor in 2023. Her resulting paintings, exhibited in her solo show "Passenger" at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in Berlin in 2024, emerged from her realization that photographs cannot capture the full reality of dance. "Through photographs, you can't really experience the effort, the bulging of calf muscles, the concentration and stamina," Bartley explained, noting that painting offers creative license to convey these sensations.
Bartley's approach involved experimenting with pronounced body areas, exploring concepts of beauty and ugliness, and paying special attention to dancers' dirty sports socks, which she felt perfectly captured the strength and struggle required for seemingly effortless choreography. Fellow London-based artist Florence Peake takes a less figurative approach, creating visual works that serve as direct outcomes or remnants of live performance. As a trained dancer working in both painting and choreography throughout her career, Peake recently created a 16-by-16-meter floor painting for Jupiter Artland in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The painting's foundation was created during a summer 2024 performance titled "To Love and to Cherish," which featured two male performers joined in a continuous kiss while other performers poured paint over them. Installed in The Glasshouse, which also serves as a wedding venue, the work was intended to subvert traditional marriage vows and serve as a physical reminder of queer love. Peake spent two weeks after the performance adding new marks guided by memories of the tangled bodies from the event.
Peake's work often creates objects that continue evolving through dance, with paintings being reused in performances or exhibited in new contexts. Her 2021 performance "Factual Actual" at the National Gallery in London featured large painted canvases that dancers manipulated into sculptural forms. The performance toured to venues including Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh and The Towner in Eastbourne, with the canvases later displayed in a traditional exhibition format at London's Richard Saltoun in 2023.
Even painters without formal movement training recognize parallels between their painting processes and dance. London-based Canadian painter Megan Rooney, known for abstract canvases with gestural brushstrokes, describes her studio practice as consisting of "small performances that no one sees." She frequently collaborates with choreographer Temitope Ajose and dancer Leah Marojevic, who develop live dance works inspired by her paintings and narratives.
Berlin-based painter Marcus Nelson credits social media with making the relationship between dance and painting more fluid, citing his 2024 Instagram connection with emerging Scottish choreographer Magnus Westwell that led to a yearlong collaboration. Their project culminated in "WEIGHT," a show featuring Nelson's paintings and Westwell's film at Number 1 Main Road in Berlin. Nelson's practice involves staging elaborate shoots under stark lighting while moving to dramatic film scores, requiring intense planning including sketches, stage plans, and directions.
Nelson's collaboration with Westwell involved recreating the choreographer's film movements on what he calls his "strange, alternate body." Despite the physical difficulty of achieving these movements without formal dance training, Nelson found the experience exhilarating as it introduced new physical configurations he had never depicted before. This expanded understanding of bodily possibilities was precisely why he sought choreographer collaboration in the first place.
The contemporary relationship between dance and painting has become increasingly liberated compared to earlier periods. Peake notes that there used to be snobbery around working with "shambolic body art people," but artists now feel more freedom to cross disciplinary boundaries. Today's most compelling results emerge when painters collaborate with specialized movement artists rather than pursuing these explorations in isolation, with the tension from these artistic collisions pushing painting into new and unexpected directions.
