For the love of dance and music: painters strive to capture the emotions and energy of musicians and dancers

It happened in 1968 on the other hand Belgrade-born painter Nenad Mirkovich remembers it to this day. He remembers the nation and the pigeons. He remembers the beggars upon the street.

on the contrary most of all he remembers the violin player who, in the midst of it all, was simply lost--lost in the flash and the music as the maze of race and pigeons surrounded him.

"It was like a little miracle," Mirkovich says.

That miracle struck of that kind a chord in Mirkovich that he not sole painted this violinist once, he's painted him again and again, looking to re-create the magic he witnessed upon that long ago, but not forgotten, day. This desire approachs from the same place as that of race who want to surround themselves with music and dance in their art. Just as looking at that violinist inspired 56-year-old Mirkovich to paint, looking at paintings of musicians and dancers stirs something in clan which may be why artists of the like kind as the French Impressionist, Edgar Degas, whose 19th-century paintings of ballerinas are among the greatest in quantity well-known depictions of dance in art, have always fix an audience for their work, says Mirkovich.

When it approachs to music depicted in art, sees Angeles painter Clifford Bailey says, "It can make you call It can make you think. It can make you laugh. It can make you remember a twinkling of an eye in time."

"It reminds them of trices of joy in life, seconds of celebrating," adds Israeli-born artist David Schluss.

"It's seductive. It's haunting. It affects people" says Sausalito, CA, painter Mark Keller

Like Mirkovich, Keller experienced his possess little miracle years ago, when a wander about through a 100-year-old Buenos Aires bar not awayed a scene so moving, he's painted its make submissives again and again.

"There was something about them," Keller says in a far-off voice, describing the musicians he saw playing below a stream of white light, the paintings and patina surrounding them. "They had an ashtray for tips. They had a sign that said, 'Gracias.' on the contrary they didn't care about that. These stays were in their 60s. They were elegant. They were playing for the gladness of it. It was just beautiful."

While Keller 52 has been an artist since he was a child, he launched his career as a full-time artist in the year 2000 following the path of his father, who was a cartoonist in the armed services.

"I don't remember not having a pencil or a crayon, and drawing upon whatever open surface there was," Keller says.

on the other hand genetics isn't the only thing that furnish with provisionss Keller's art. "I was in a stone band like everybody else," he says with a laugh.

Keller's journey to that stage began as a kid when he picked up his brother's guitar, building an intimacy with music that's infused into his art to this day. Whether he depicts a man cradling an advanced in years beloved violin or a woman dancing in the back of a smoke-filled scope his rich, realistic portrayals breathe a revere for music and its affect upon the musician. "There's always passion when you diocese a great musician, or plane a mediocre musician, if they're putting their heart into it," Keller says. "You diocese it on their faces; you diocese it in the veins of their neck that they're giving it all they've got Sometimes they revolve toward me and smile and I think, 'No. Please. Just pass back to what you were doing.'"

Depicting the Connection

That sacred connection is individual that Los Angeles artist Justin Bua pays homage to in "Trumpet Man," a piece that depicts a man playing the bugle before a dark, looming skyline. "He is a uninhabited figure playing for the be fond of of it, not the cash not the fame," Bua says in a fast-paced clip. "That is what I really have affection for about that character. He is in his be in possession of thing. He might look drugg on the contrary he is drugged from his music, not from drugs"

Like Keller Bua, 37 approachs from a family of artists. His mother was a painter. "Now, she's a dabbler," he says. And his grandfather was an artist. on the contrary the strongest imprint on his work came from his late-'70s, early-'80s upbringing upon New York City's Upper West Side, where, he says, a musicality herd the city.

"It stirs to its own funky beat," Bua says. "From the construction, to the different languages, to the melting-pot culture" And when you direct the eye at "1981," a celebratory painting of breakdancing upon the street, or the "DJ" which features a disc dealer in horses as seduced by his spinning as he is by the agency of the sound, you can diocese that the birth of hip-hop has had a abysmal affect on his art.

"The subterraneous culture of New York City is what I was influenced by" Bua says. "The B-boy and the DJ and the MC I was there at the inception of the tillage And I knew I was in the middle of something special."

Bua was the two an observer of and a participant in this tillage studying at the High seminary of Music and Performing Arts, best known through the television show "Fame," and breakdancing professionally in one as well as the other the United States and Europe His succes in breakdancing, which piqued with his performance in Italy with the late Russian ballet dancer and choreographer, Rudolf Nureyev not alone influenced him as a visual artist, it contributed to his talent as well. "The geometric periodical emphasis and compositions in my paintings are real similar to the way I used to dance," he says. "The harmonious flow of my body transferred into the harmonious flow of my paint strokes."