The English artist Roo Burridge once worked as a professional fire breather, juggler and stilt-walker after coming to settle in Portugal with her husband 15 years ago.

Which may all seem a far cry from the rarified atmosphere of the fine art studio but the ‘stories’ that Roo depicts in her paintings show interesting parallels. The dynamic of body language and the figure - a vital element of theatre and performance - is something which has long held a strong fascination for this 46-year-old artist. Indeed, it is pivotal to her creative output which, over the last decade, has earned her a growing reputation in the Portuguese gallery scene and the world of private and public collectors.

“My work is all about the figure and body language and much of this stems from my love of life drawing in my earlier days at college. I like to explore this dynamic through the observation of individuals and interaction within a group,” she said.“The whole body language I find fascinating and I do have a bit of an obsession about hands and feet and skin tone.”

Her paintings are expressionist in style and she uses exaggerated perspective and formal distortion to achieve heightened effects in the mood and narrative of the picture, often tinged with eroticism or humour and perhaps a theatrical undercurrent. There is always a psychological ‘edge’ to the orchestration of the imagery and  pictorial elements. Subjects range from people around a dinner table, swimming pool or on a dance floor, people in conversation at a bar to entwined couples or enigmatic images of a single figure often in dynamic pose ‘floating’ in a space with no background. At other times an isolated, animated figure reminiscent of a circus trapeze artist in action confronts the viewer, the perspective and foreshortening of the body pushed to the ultimate degree. A similar painting of a female figure on stilts is clearly autobiographical.In another painting a dancer is embracing her partner with enlarged hands and looks over his shoulder straight at the viewer.Sometimes a figure is nudged halfway out of the picture plane suggesting another unknown story beyond the parameters of the composition. The aesthetics of Roo’s paintings are rigorously considered. She frequently uses computer technology to create photo images of her figures that are combined with oil painting and meticulously organised on the canvas or paper.

“I have a very strong idea of how I want the composition to be so I work that to a degree and then get various models and pose them in the desired position,” she explained. “I photograph each model individually and then I tend to manipulate that image in photoshop and then oil painting to fit the concept, so it is very much a controlled process.”

Born in London, Roo studied fine art and sculpture at Kingston Polytechnic in England. She won the Stanley Picker Travelling Scholarship to Sri Lanka in 1984 and also received the Chelsea Building Society Award in1985. She has exhibited in more than 20 solo and group shows in England, France, Australia and Portugal between 1983 and 2009 and is a member of the Arte Algarve movement. In June 2008 her work was featured on a RTP2 television programme on art and culture. She lives and works in Mafra.