Dance Seismography: Robert Wright’s Over, Under, Sideways, Down at Summit Artspace

“It’s kind of like I’m a human seismograph, and I capture the instantaneous spirit of the motion,” artist Robert Wright said, responding to a question about how different types of dance affect his work. But even if it is inspired by dance, and represent its movements, and is actually inseparable from it, what the painter does is not dance notation. His paintings are to dance more like what ekphrastic poetry is to painting. He’s making abstract art with lines that follow, rather than lead. For the painter, dance is the beginning. Rather than documenting so that someone else could replicate the same performance, he’s taking inspiration from it to create a completely distinct art. A collection of his works is on view in Over, Under, Sideways Down in the Intersections Gallery at Summit Artspace.

Many of the paintings don’t immediately bring dance to mind at all. In fact, Wright says they are often mistaken for some kind of Asian calligraphy. It is easy to understand why. The gestures accumulate in lines; they develop a rhythm. In that sense they have a lot in common with calligraphy, or handwriting in any language. In fact, the name of the show—Over, under, Sideways, Down—sounds like the kind of command a handwriting teacher would repeat to guide cursive practice drills. In some of the paintings, he has added realistic dancing figures, and those help with the connection to dance. Most of the paintings don’t have that, though, and the connection is, for the viewer at least, much more subtle. He makes them by watching dancers, and, with gestures, following their movements with a brush that leaves lines behind. A human seismograph, indeed. There’s a video on his website that doesn’t result in one of his paintings, but does provide a beautiful window on the process.

But the seismography is as much about his internal expression as it is about documenting the dancers’ movement. “So many things go into how movement gets drawn,” he says. “The music I’m hearing, the rhythm of the motion, tempo, the stresses of the motion, the mood (mine as well as the room), things I’m happy or upset about, etc..” So while the few paintings with realistic human figures defy the idea, much of his output is a dance-inspired abstract expressionism.

Wright began watching dancers to inspire his paintings more than fifty years ago at Ohio State University. He did it because in figure drawing classes, he was asked to make gesture drawings, and he wanted to improve that skill. “I really enjoyed trying to capture the fleeting movement with a kind of calligraphy,” he says.

Back then he’d work or go to school by day, painting at night and on weekends. “If there was dance on PBS or Olympic ice dance/skating I drew from TV,” he says. “If I had enough money, I’d go to Columbus BalletMet and draw from performances.”

He eventually got a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design, then taught himself graphic skills and became senior art director for a design firm. After 23 years in that role he went back to school at OSU for an MA in art education so he could begin a new career, teaching art first to elementary schoolers, then at Circleville High School (south of Columbus). He retired from teaching in 2017, and moved to the Cleveland area three years later. For a couple of years he sat in on Groundworks Dance Theatre rehearsals to draw, but the company ceased operation in August, 2024. These days he draws while watching rehearsals of Ohio Contemporary Ballet and Inlet Dance Theatre. “Both (Ohio Contemporary Ballet director) Margaret Carlson and (Inlet Dance director) Bill Wade are very kind to allow me to come,” he says. Many of the paintings are named for the company he was watching, and the date. All the paintings from Over, Under, Sideways, Down were painted in 2023 and 2024.

Viewers can’t help but see movement, gesture, and even some kind of transcription, in the handwriting sense, looking at Wright’s paintings. But in the Archibold MacLeash, Ars Poetica sense—contained in the line, “A poem should not mean / but be”–in Wright’s work, the line is the thing: it means what it is.

While you’re at Summit Artspace, it’s worth wandering the building to check out other shows, starting with this year’s iteration of the annual Fresh exhibit. But be sure to also catch Milestones & Roadside Attractions, and Eric Tuck-Macalla’s Mutual Aid. It’s all up through March 14.

Robert Wright: Over, Under, Sideways, Down
January 10 – March 14
Summit Artspace Intersections Gallery
140 E Market Street
Akron OH 44308
330.376.8480