Winters Dance

pastel on card 30x40 inches

Deesse Du Soir

Pastel on paper 22x30 inches

Liar

Pastel on paper 30x22 inches

Jack of Hearts

Pastel on paper 30x22 inches
Study pastel on paper 16x12 inches




In The Blink Of An Eye

Pastel on paper 22x30 inches


Masked

Pastel on paper 30x22 inches

Dancing With Dancers

Pastel on paper 22x30 inches


Cut The Rug

pastel on paper 22x30 inches

Fancy Dress

pastel on paper 22x30 inches

Red White And Black

pastel on paper 22x30 inches
Study pastel on paper 16x12 inches

Tango Lesson

pastel on paper 22x30 inches
study pastel on paper 16x12 inches

Live Music

pastel on paper 30x22 inches

Belle Of The Ball

pastel on paper 22x30 inches
Study pastel on paper 12x16 inches



Love the Night

pastel on paper 22x30 inches

Look The Look

pastel on paper 22x30 inches
Study pastel on paper 16x12 inches








Stepping Out

pastel on paper 30x22 inches


Desert Dance

pastel on paper 30x22 inches
Study pastel on paper 16x12 inches



Swing

pastel on paper 30x22 inches


Call It A Day

Oil on canvas 40x32 inches

Disco Divas

Study pastel 12x17

Halloween

Study pastel on paper 16x12 inches
pastel on paper 22x30 inches






A Night At EL Gato Loco

Pastel on paper 30x22 inches
Study pastel on paper 16x12 inches














Odile Odette

pastel on paper 22x30 inches
Study pastel on paper 16x12 inches

Lights Out

Pastel on paper 22x30 inches

Fred and Ginger

Pastel on card 40x32 inches
BY CELIA MCGEE

Nigel van Wieck spent much of the 1990s painting portraits, and it shows. Not in the sense that his works in "Dancers," at the Beadleston Gallery, are actual likenesses. The scenes are invented and seem to take place anywhere from the Roaring Twenties to only last night. Their concentrated abandon and hilarity populate a nightlife of clubs, ballrooms, exotic dives, torchlit townhouses the artist conjures by fusing different places and times, styles of art and fashion.

But a decade of pinning high-society subjects with psychological precision means that Van Wieck, an Englishman living in New York, can cut to the heart of atmosphere.

In "Winter's Dance," which outlines a glamorous couple in this case, African-American against a window, the tropical mood is the opposite of the title. That suggests a chilly decorum, while the pair, as in many of Van Wieck's paintings, is locked in a steamy sashay blending romance and violence.

Lots of his pictures are of revelers wearing masks, not disguising their emotions so much as illustrating a need to hide. In "Liar," a headdress sprouts black wings like a bird of prey's. There's just enough tension in the lighthearted air to imply that Van Wieck's frequent mix of races, genders, classes and sexual proclivities happens only with the aid of costuming and after dark.

And who wouldn't want to go there? Van Wieck choreographs two art forms painting and dance so they dip and twirl, caress and carouse, as one