The relationship between a picture’s figure and ground has often featured in modern art as a differentiating factor between one artist’s oeuvre and another’s. 

Piet Mondrian, for instance, in his early abstraction more than a century ago, worked hard at enlivening the white background of his paintings through pronounced brushwork to activate the background as equal in form to the coloured shapes and lines that figure in front.*

In describing this, however, I’ve already described two types of background. A historical background through reference to Mondrian, and a pictorial background Mondrian made equal to the painting’s figures. 

In this edition of five works that comprise Shared Background: Family Portrait, each painting’s figure is cut-out and filled with background space. The figure in each portrait shares the same background as do family members who share the same genes and ancestral moments pertaining to those genes.

* See, for instance, Carol Blotkampt, Mondrian: The Art of Destruction, Reaktion Books, London 1994, p. 100.