What started out as a series of paintings of dancers celebrating their athleticism and beauty, turned into a spiritual experience for me after I painted the fiftieth painting in the series I ‘ve always heard it said that dance is a metaphor for life, but I actually experienced it and the paintings evolved into much more than an appreciation of an aesthetic. I’m a seeker of the truth and have been since I was very young. There are many more paintings to be made in this series. It is my intent that paintings in the Dancer’s Palette series energize you and create harmony in the spaces where they live. This book is dedicated to all the dancers.
Faktorovich: You say in the description to your 2015 art book, Dancer’s Palette, that dance is a metaphor for life and goes beyond the aesthetic to the truth. Can you specify what does dance say about life? Do different positions and movements equate to movements in the plot of life (violent, still, at rest, etc.)? The term “movement” is in your subtitle. What do you tend to think about as you are drawing these?
Leifert: Dance is a metaphor for living. Dance encompasses vitality, divine energy, hope and joy. Before there was written down religion, people danced their religion. Dance is primal to human beings—it is 100,000 years old.
When I dance, I can get to a place where I am able to lose myself and I’m connected to something that can’t be described.
I began dance school lessons at age three—I continued through grade school—I was about age nine, and I remember one night my mother’s girlfriend visited. This woman was very cool. She knew I danced and she coaxed me to create an improvised dance. I’d only done that alone in my room. They played Errol Garner’s song “Misty,” sung by Johnny Mathis. I connected with the music. I felt encouraged, so I just let go. It was a breakthrough moment of losing all self-consciousness and really being one with the music. Some people call it being in the zone. I liked that place.
From that time on, I have always been a seeker of the zone. I began asking myself existential questions: who am I and why am I here—and moreover, who are you—if I’m me.
I wrote a poem about that time: I’m going to tell it to you, it will give you some insight into my thoughts. I was nine, so I used a dictionary:
The abstruse always in recluse, non-participants in life
The reckless are a parody, participants in strife
Blood shed like alizarin in this cold and hungry war
The human deaths never cease; is this what we’re living for?
So, for me dance has always been a way to go deeper into who I am and connect with my internal pulse. It sounds like new age bull until you have the actual experience of this, and most people have had that experience—whether they decide to nurture it and evolve from it is another story. I am all about evolving as a person and an artist. That is what I am here to do.
When I am painting, I don’t think. I put on music, usually Stevie Wonder, because he is so extraordinary and I lose myself in the painting, just like I did in the “Misty” dance. Time can go by without me being aware of it. I never go into the studio when I have to be somewhere in the next hour or two. I will miss the appointment.
Faktorovich: Did you use a projector to create the outlines of the dancing figures? Did you paint them on canvas or digitally? The paintings you have on your website are done in varied styles and some obviously have broken or exaggerated forms that could not have been traced from a photograph. And others like this dancer series have very realistic outlines that seem measured. Can you talk about the different paintings techniques you have experimented with, and how these worked out? Where are you currently heading with your painting? Did you use many dancers or a few of them? Are the dancers nude, or are they wearing body-hugging outfits that do not stand out in profile?
“Freedom”
30″x18″
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
I have affinity for elephants. They should not be hunted.