Dancer on Red

This young dancer, assumedly a pretty and tall young beauty, is a Maenad. Red is the color of torn flesh and blood. Her dance is innocent, as someone who dances just before love. It is an epiphany of beauty, yet strange. Steer away from the Maenads, if you happen to step into their dance in the woods. But there is a deep innocence in them, as in their master and God Dionysus. Still remember Euripides’ words about Dionysus in the tragedy “the Bacchae”, the young stranger in Thebes. Love this cadmium red and its cold counterpart, a light phthalocyanine blue. The coldest color of all. So, stay deep into this painting, dance with it. And then freeze.