2013-2014
20 archival inkjet pigment prints; edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs; sizes variable from 20” x 28” to 24” x 29.5”
When we are alive, our souls are dead and buried in us, but when we die, our souls come to life again and live. – Heraclitus
When I began this series, I wanted to work again with human skulls, and to see how they would feel when combined with the black translucent scrim. Immediately, I was bothered by the degree of contrast between the black scrim and the white skull placed in front of it; this hadn’t been a problem in the (W)Holes series because the stark contrast was in keeping with the aggressive nature of the imagery, but it felt wrong here. So I tried to find something that would take the edge off the whiteness; what I came up with was a very thin, lightly checked scarf.
I draped it over the skull, and the effect was magical. The skull retained its ‘skullness,’ while also acquiring an almost-human presence: it felt like a kind of alter-ego. That thought, in turn, prompted me to add a second skull in some of the images – one with a different feeling to it. To achieve this, I painted two additional skulls a dark charcoal and juxtaposed one of them with the veiled skull to create a dialogue. (As a note, while all the other skulls I have photographed have been real, the dark ones, which have slightly different shapes, are plastic; I could not bring myself to paint real bone.)