The Circle Game

The Circle Game ©2017 - This piece was inspired by the vintage photo of two young girls with facial expressions that are hauntingly wistful. Dressed all in white and holding hands to form a circle, they brought to mind childhood summers of local fairs and carousels. Having no carousel images in my files, I began a search and found an unusually lovely one consisting of not horses, but an assortment of endangered species at The Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange, NJ (if you're in the area, it's located in the South Mountain Reservation and well worth a visit). Oddly enough, it included a magnificent dragon that was perfect for my composition. The background image is a montage of three different photos; two from the area around Trenton, NJ of gently, rolling hills and a sky from Watchung, NJ. I arranged the dragons descending from the clouds behind the girls and a number of crows from my travels circling around them. Selected filters, color and texture brought them all together for the final piece. The title for this one was in place before I even began and comes from the first verse of the song "The Circle Game" by the one and only Joni Mitchell, 1970:

Yesterday a child came out to wonder

Caught a dragonfly inside a jar

Fearful when the sky was full of thunder

And tearful at the falling of a star

And the seasons they go round and round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We're captive on the carousel of time

We can't return we can only look behind

From where we came

And go round and round and round

In the circle game