Rebecca Zeh

Dancing Outdoors

Over the past few years several of my creative passions have fused together. Through this fusion I have created a unique interdisciplinary artistic practice. Creating visual art, dance, and interacting with nature are huge passions of mine and they all play an important role in the creation of my art.

My work utilizes mixed drawing and painting media, paper collage, photography, film, and print-making techniques to create a visual space where dance, nature, and art-making intersect to evoke the feeling of moving as one with the elements of the outdoors. Photographic and film references, as well as memories from exploring movement in outdoor settings, inspire the imagery in my drawings. This mix of different media and references allows me to evoke movement through layers of rich texture and expressive mark-making. I often film myself dancing outdoors as well and I share these short video clips with my audience.

The type of dance that my fellow dancers and I practice is largely improvisational. Because of this, the poses of the figures and narratives portrayed in my drawings are often unconventional or may seem unusual compared to what type of dance imagery has often been portrayed in visual art throughout history. We are a group of everyday people who enjoy expressing ourselves creatively through movement and the philosophy of our group is that everyone is a dancer. Playing into the uniqueness of the fleeting moments in our improvised dances is also integral to my work.