For the first time, we're offering a still life painting workshop focusing specifically on trompe-l'oeil, co-taught by instructors Sally Fama Cochrane and Devin Cecil-Wishing. Here, Sally answers the tricky question of what makes a painting a "trompe-l'oeil."
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| "Fish Allergy" by Sally Fama Cochrane |
“Trompe-l’oeil” means “fool the eye,” and is commonly
defined as an “illusionistic” painting. But as realist painters, we want the objects in every
still life or figure painting to look real. So, what distinguishes a
“trompe-l’oeil” from any other realistic painting?
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| "Sand Dollar" by Devin Cecil-Wishing |
The difference lies in where the illusion begins. Ever since the
Renaissance and the invention of perspective, the surface of the canvas
functioned as an invisible “window” through which the viewer could see into another
world: just beyond that window was a convincingly illusionistic
three-dimensional space with people and objects inhabiting it.
Trompe-l’oeil paintings, however, bring that
illusionistic space one step closer to the viewer, by creating the illusion
that objects in the painting are part of the viewer’s world. By breaking this
assumed boundary between the viewer’s world of material objects and the painted
world of objects, the trompe-l’oeil forces those painted objects to seem even
more real.
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| "Scurvy" by Sally Fama Cochrane |
As an example
of how a trompe-l’oeil can push an object into the viewer’s world, take my painting, “Scurvy.” The red rusty wall with teeth hanging on it is the painted surface separating us from the implied space beyond it, inside the porthole with the lemons. But by painting the open porthole door -- extending into the world of the
viewer -- the reality of the rest of the painted world (the lemons, limes and
teeth) becomes even more immediate, as if the viewer could reach in and open the door and the lemons and limes would tumble out.
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| "Trompe-L'Oeil" by Devin Cecil-Wishing |
Trompe-l’oeil
paintings can also thrust the entire illusion into the viewer's space. Take for example Devin’s painting
“Trompe-L’oeil.” Here, since we accept a frame as a typical boundary
between our world and a painted world, all of the objects within this painted frame or shadowbox appear even more immediately real than in a typically-composed still life. The
detail of the pencil pointing outward, toward us, further emphasizes this
effect.
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| "Soy allergy" by Sally Fama Cochrane |
This power
of the trompe-l’oeil to inhabit the viewer’s world makes the objects not just
“realistic,” but so real that you feel like you could touch them. Trompe-l’oeil
paintings expand the visual to the tactile. This power is what led me to
employ it as a compositional device for my series on food allergies.
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| "Milk allergy" by Sally Fama Cochrane |
The tactile quality of these paintings echoes the immediate, personal, and sensory relationship we have with
food and highlights the paradox of not being able to touch a particular food allergen (the way you can't actually touch the objects in the paintings).
Come learn the techniques to make your own personalized illusions in our 5-day Trompe-L'Oeil Still Life Painting workshop June 20-24, 2016. For more information and to sign up, click here.
