“Art of Dance, Dayle Bolton’s tenth show with Libby Edwards Galleries, kicked off on Saturday 25th May 2024. Drawing a supportive and enthusiastic, art-loving crowd of admirers, many who travelled two hours from Northern country Victoria.
The artist’s recent transition from town to country Victoria, is reflected in works such as “Country Studio”, from her 2024 solo show, “Art of Dance”. Elkie, the pet dog and ever-present ‘muse’ is portrayed in the old country cottage, Dayle Bolton’s full-time painting studio. In this painting we revel in the whimsical interior composition, delicately textured, sun-bronzed surfaces exposed by the autumn daylight. Cheerful delight in her daily art practice is evident in the personal subject matter, especially the detail given to the ethereal bush setting glimpsed through the French door to the left of Bolton’s unfinished painting, a subtle reminder of a solitary, yet rewarding life of an artist.
One might encounter, through Bolton’s classical settings, the solitary moment of a performer behind the curtain stage, or a juggler in full flight, on a wind-swept beach. The viewer is immersed in a poignant and nostalgic sensory experience; a tender moment between a circus dog and performer, is captured with gothic references to a bygone era. The artist’s atmospheric application of oil paint is reminiscent of European Old Masters’ paintings. There is a distinct parallel with French impressionist painter Edgar Degas and his iconic ballerinas – subjects for whose outer beauty hides a secret existence, of difficult lives marred by poverty and prostitution. Both Bolton and Degas’s portraits evoke a sense of this duality, of an idealised, immortalised image that hides the dark-side of being human.
After winning The Myer Award for Illustration in 1972, Bolton worked as a freelance illustrator for major national and International retailers and magazines. Notably in London in the 1970’s, her illustrations in Vogue featured as full-page advertisements in the press, many of which were later sold as limited edition prints. Back in Australia the artist was selected as a finalist in the Alice Bale Portraiture Prize in 1992. Bolton’s work embodies the maturity of her experiences in alternate design fields. The theatrically composed works transport us on a journey to explore the profane, and to witness a mythology that is, at once, familiar and strange.