The lights dimmed the audience silent, the scene set. Shadows cast and prepare to dance in close company with the lead lady, commencing her lavish, beguiling routine and championing of a culture and its many stories manifest in its people and traditions.

A many textured canvas is blessed by the invincibility of a many layered dress, fishtailing out and instigating gasps and applause in equal measure from the direction on an impassioned and enflamed audience, gorging on the performance modesty that’ about to ensure.

Nobody paints beautiful, gregarious, confident women in such a powerful light as the lord of the visual dance imagination himself, Fletcher Sibthorp.

The hugely popular contemporary figurative artist Sibthorp’s latest visual revelation, ‘El Chal 2’ conveys the same magnetic qualities and beguiling charm and imbued personality as those that have gone before and indeed, those set to follow.

Deep, dark and quasi-sinister greys, blues and blacks mount the background challenge, while golds, savannahs, bronzes and pewters, chop and change with whites and browns on the immaculate dress, ruffled, cuffed and pleated to perfection and worn with such cause and consequence by the leading lady.