The Floating Dancers in Blues

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Parliamentary Counsel, 1 Horse Guards Road

Nancy Clayton is a visual artist and dancer, whose practice is informed by music. She works with pastel and, in many cases, with charcoal on paper. This is one of two large-scale drawings of dancers, informed by her observation of the body in motion and her experience of how music is felt in the body. The complex figurative compositions in the works balance the weight and momentary flight of the body while capturing the emotional intensity shared through performance. Clayton, speaking about these particular works, has described how she ‘put figures together, as a theme, a collection of people and colours...I look at how [the dancer] floats and how they stand out, and at how the anxiety is moving out of them. Sometimes my drawings are like dreams, sometimes ghost-like: the eyes are coming towards you, the colours are melting away.

Nancy Clayton was born in London, where she currently lives. She has been a member of the Intoart Collective since 2019, which defines itself as an alternative art school enabling those with learning disabilities to develop a long term creative practice.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), pastel, drawing (Art object type), pastel drawing

Artist

Nancy Clayton

Title

The Floating Dancers in Blues

Date

2021

Medium

pastel on paper

Dimensions

height: 114 cm; width: 165.5 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Intoart, September 2022

Provenance

Intoart, London UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 22 September 2022

GAC number

19113