The Art of Falling

Contemporary circus painting of five acrobats spinning and falling in space, Nicholas Stedman Orbital Series — *The Art of Falling* — Oil on Canvas, 180 × 165 cm. A contemporary circus painting from the *Orbital Series* by Nicholas Stedman. (Click image to continue)

About this Painting

This painting is part of my Orbital Series, which explores completely free-form circular movements in space. Working with aerial choreographer Fred Deb and her partner (*Tintin*), we experimented with a twisting belt that enables the body to rotate across all three dimensions. Over several afternoons, we recorded many movements on video and selected key freeze-frames as the basis for pictorial studies.

In the final painting, these distinct movements are combined into differently colored strips. The figures are drawn in oil sticks so that the gesture of my hand imparts a sense of kinetic energy to the frozen imagery.

In 5 × 5, this concept is carried further: five colored strips each represent five points of a circular movement. The work has been reproduced on the covers of two books: The Art of Falling, a poetry collection from which the painting takes its title, and a Cambridge University Press textbook on Health and Physical Education.

You can view a related piece from this series here: Orbital 18.

This original painting and other similar works are available for purchase directly from the artist. Enquiries welcome.