Scroll down to see the painting and click the painting to zoom in

To tell you the truth, I didn’t just buy a single 50×50 linen canvas — I bought several. I like the format, I like the material. There must be more stories I can tell within those square borders.

In truth, this painting started from a very different place. For a long time, I had carried a vague ambition to paint a sauna master mid-ceremony, fanning heavy clouds of vapor for his guests. It was an image rooted in atmosphere: dense air, heat, something ritualistic.

But something shifted — maybe it was painting The Boxer, maybe it was the linen itself, maybe just the mood I found myself in. The sauna scene lost its pull. My mind kept reaching for greys, muted earth tones, quieter emotions.

Well — the smoke remained. But out of that smoke, a very different painting began to take form.
This one brings me back to women. I wanted another mysterious scene: a single figure, caught off-guard in a backstage world. I was aiming for that "caught in the act" expression—unguarded, somewhere between effort and ease. I also wanted a good dose of drama.

I couldn’t help but think of Degas and his ballerinas, stretching and preparing behind the scenes — those fleeting, unglamorous moments before the performance, full of tension and intimacy. I wondered: what could I do with those same themes — performance, the backstage, the unspoken — and weave them into my own preoccupations: tension, gesture, layered emotion?

Instead of a sauna master, I chose a burlesque dancer as my focal point. She allowed me to bring in a little theatricality — the magnificent feather shawls, the dramatic makeup, the costume that is both armor and ornament.

To anchor the setting, I added a mirror lit with glowing vanity bulbs — to heighten the tension between warm and cool tones, between what is seen, and what is merely reflected. What is performed, and what is real.

This painting isn’t a show, and it’s not the moment before. It’s the quiet after — the brief stillness when the crowd is gone, the mask is slipping, and the room exhales. A space full of surface and shadow, presence and performance, truth and illusion — steeped, still, in smoke.

But there’s more in that theme. Another idea is lingering in me: a second dancer, in yet another backstage room. More composed, in a different kind of fragility. It’s still forming — but even now, I can almost feel her coming out of the smoke.