Dancing Women, Dancing Stones
In Dancing Women, Dancing Stones, three women dance in a moonlit landscape. The stones were based on the Bronze-Age King’s Stone at Rollright Stones – a group of megalithic monuments which lie on the border between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. According to a Medieval legend, a witch turned the king into the King Stone to protect the pastureland from becoming a battlefield. In Sjöö’s composition the poses of the women mimic the irregular shapes of the stones. The sing-song title creates a parity between the women and stones so that the natural environment holds the same importance as the human figures. The painting also includes symbolic imagery, such as a ram’s head and spiral form.
