All two dimensional art is an illusion - paintings, computer screen, T.V., etc. An artist isn’t actually able to create space in 2D, so attempts to make an impression of it through manipulative techniques. In my twenties, I became fascinated with the paintings of Victorian artists such as JMW Turner and John Martin due to the way they used the surface of the canvas to create the illusion of broad stretches of land or sea, as if painted through a wide-angle lens. Of course, a sense of space doesn’t have to be expansive. It can equally be intimate, secret - or anywhere between those extremes. An artist can play with the illusion of space by use of perspective techniques. He knows that whatever he’s doing - it’s all an illusion.
But isn’t it also interesting how the viewer is also instantly drawn into the illusion too, transported into a feeling of being there? It’s as if the mind instantly draws upon memory banks of previous experiences, referencing them in reaction to the illusion, to read the image spatially, instead of being flat, which it literally is! Or is there perhaps some other explanation? Whatever the case, I remain fascinated by my ability to create the illusion of space in my paintings, sharing it with others to evoke their own experience.
Steve Slimm - March 2023
