Of Ballerina Ward says, “at a certain point in the creation of this series I realized the tolerances of the process, and the ability to extend beyond it and away from realism into abstraction. The beauty of this child ballerina in a moment of focus led to my appreciation of the power of objecthood within a framework of realism.”
Approaching this thought, Ward considers that “the most difficult technical challenge for the figurative artist is to create a cogent work that holds together with few anchor points in specifics of realism or identity.” He explores this challenge through a complex process of rendering details in full, before applying layers of wash in order to “reveal the details of her being, whilst not revealing her identity.”