What's Going On In Your Head When You're Dancing?

This is the title to an exhibition of Karl Hyde's paintings and drawings at the  Bernard Jacobson Gallery on Cork Street from 17th July to 10th August.

These paintings are large, they stretch across the wall and are full of energy and vitality. There is a feeling of movement and a rapid gestural swoosh of a brush and charcoal, but standing in the space you can see there is much thought and contemplation that goes into the forms that dance across these canvasses. One can see the contrast of creating something that is rapid motion and movement but at the same time needing to think through how you want to fill that space and create a coherent expression of that moment of music and movement that is dance. Film can capture that, but the essence of film is movement. These paintings capture that moment of movement.

I was taken by the titles of the paintings, "Following The Sound Of Your Voice", "Birdlike Woman Runs a Giant Comb in through her Hair", "Your Feet Flick Fast with a mind of their own" or "On a Pink and Windy Morning" and many more. They are titles to short stories or the first line in a poem, or like a fleeting memory.

Many other images and paintings come to my mind when seeing these paintings, the colors of black white and red remind me much of contemporary Japanese calligraphy, but the more immediate image that came to my mind was the explosive sequences of Manga Anime.

Rapid, movement, gestures, fast, explosive, but pattern, rhythm, beauty, like Japanese calligraphy.

In my head when I am dancing it is the fusion of mind body and soul with music, I forget everything and exist in the moment letting my body move to the music.

See the show at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery, 6 Cork Street, London.