1973
Sketches

October 14, 1973

 Wendy is getting married on my birthday. Upon thinking about what to give her for a wedding present I decided upon a painting.  Thinking about what to paint I have just hit upon a great idea.  It will be an abstract portrait of her and Sean. Plan to do one for Ann Casey, John and Joan, Bill, and Brenda and Tom. By a portrait I mean a figure of a face done with geometrical objects. The color, shape and arrangement will represent how I see the persons.

I did complete the painting for Wendy and Sean but was not the Picasso style of geometrical shapes.   Wendy was taking modern dance and regularly was going to dance classes so I decided to incorporate the dance theme into the painting.  It had two figures dancing together floating high in the sky above a valley.   The two figures and valley were in a cameo like oval in the center of the painting with a smaller cameo oval in each corner with single dancing figures.  The dancing figures were based on figures in a doddle that I had drawn earlier in the year.

I liked the form of the dancing figure so worked on variations of them.

A sketch is close to what I actually painted in the center.

Additional sketches of the dancing figures.

But here is the sketch used in the final painting along with the title.

The Dance of Love and Beauty over Sumerset Valley