The artist has written about this work in: Plain Air, 1969-1991

 

 

 

…In relation to the much earlier works, the eggshell works from 1969. First there was the broken eggshell in bronze, then later in silver, then in 1988, the ones in gold…It stands at the beginning, like a matrix out of which Dove’s oeuvre unfolds. So, like the changing paintings, it has to do with going through the veil between form and non-form. The broken eggshell is there like the record of a transit, a crossing of that border. It has also struck me that the distinction you’ve brought up is like the Buddhist ideas that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. It reminds me too of something that I’ve read where you [John Cage] talked about the possibility of there being nothing. And I took that phrase in two ways. First there’s the possibility of nothing, meaning it's possible that there would be nothing; then there's the possibility of nothing, meaning the world of potentiality comes out of nothing. And the egg piece to me seems to suggest all of that…