32" x 42" Oil on linen. copyright Norman Long 2009
This recently completed commission saw me flown over to Cuba to paint Salsa Dancers. Not really, but it did mean doing a lot of research. I didn't know the first thing about Salsa. The clients kindly agreed to dance in my studio while I did photos and studies and they taught me that the lady is the centre of attention while the man leads the moves.
The setting was to be Cuban. In this composition, with its high viewpoint, only the musicians are visible - other preliminary work involved Cuban style architecture.The couple dancing in the background are the main couple again. Degas said that a painting requires as much cunning as the perpetration of a crime. Here the musicians are drawn from internet images. The chair in the foreground is painted from life in the studio and various body parts are amalgamated for the figures. I was specifically asked for a fairly descriptive painting (i.e. not "painterly"), which increased the challenge of capturing light and movement.
