2004-2007
20 archival inkjet pigment prints; edition of 12 plus 2 artist’s proofs; 34” x 34”
The genesis of the Ghost Circles series was an exhibition of hearts by Jim Dine in which strokes of color filled the canvasses, sometimes partly obscuring the outline of the heart(s). I loved the feeling of figure and ground seeming to merge. I wanted to try to create that feeling in a body of work, and realized that the imagery would need a strong symbolic form as its focus – the equivalent of a heart, which I did not want to depict.
I decided to use a circle, having become increasingly interested in both its form and symbolism since completing the Veiled Still Lifes, where it had appeared as a solid black round. In Ghost Circles, I used the circle as an outline, combined only with the scrim; the folds of the scrim, differently composed in each image, always obscured part of the circle. The imagery is ambiguous: one could say that as the circle dissolves into the white scrim, there is a sense of merging and oneness; or, conversely, that since the circle is never fully seen, the unity and oneness it symbolizes is never quite achieved.