Let’s Keep Dancing is inspired by a Greek panigíri, a village celebration where music, food, and community merge into a shared rhythm. These gatherings have always felt sacred to me, spaces where joy, tradition, and presence coexist with an awareness of impermanence.

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The painting holds that duality: celebration alongside the quiet ache of time passing. Its title comes from Peggy Lee’s Is That All There Is?, a song that transforms existential doubt into defiance. That sentiment, choosing to dance despite life’s uncertainties—became the emotional core of the work.

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Painted during a period of solitude and transition, the figures emerged as a collective portrait of connection: people I love, people I’ve lost, and the spaces between them. The circular movement of the dancers became a metaphor for life’s ongoing cycle of holding on and letting go.

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Working at this scale for the first time, I approached the painting with architectural precision before allowing the figures to loosen and breathe. Through oil’s slow, demanding process, I learned to surrender control, letting depth, light, and motion carry both joy and fragility.

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At its heart, Let’s Keep Dancing is an invitation, to remain open, to move through grief and celebration alike, and to choose presence over paralysis. If there is a message here, it is simple: come dance.