Adding REAL Depth to Reinforce the Illusion of Depth

The traditional process of oil painting in itself tends to create the illusion of depth through layering. Even further, oil colour can be manipulated to create an illusion of depth through the play between light, color and shadow. However, even the paintings of the most talented painters, confined to a flat surface, are limited in the extent of three-dimensional illusion.

It is also true that more dimension can be added to a flat painting through the texture of the paint. For example, the impasto technique adds depth in a more tactile way, but it is also known that the amount of texture that can be achieved in oil colour (alone) is also limited. It is more of a radical approach that I am referring to in this article that creates more dimension in oil painting by adding real depth to enhance the illusion of depth.

The best way to describe the concept in which real depth is applied in oil painting, is to take you through the process of creating one of my more recent pieces entitled "A Manifold of Events", 2000. From the start, you will notice that even the title of the painting suggests a dimensional quality to the work. It is meant to capture the idea of a set of random events happening one after another, piling up on one another to form a substance; a manifold of events.

To give you a background of the piece, and to communicate why I took such a dimensional approach, I'll explain quickly how the concept originated. The painting was inspired in part by my life in my early 20's and also by an article I came across in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy when doing some research on time theories. The painting mimics a figure example explaining a portion of the Hole Argument invented by Albert Einstein in late 1913. Eventually, the painting took on a visual theory of its own on time and space, as I was trying to answer questions like those posed in the Hole Argument article of the Encyclopedia:

"What is space? What is time? Do they exist independently of the things and processes in them? Or is their existence parasitic on these things and processes? Are they like a canvas onto which an artist paints; they exist whether or not the artist paints on them? Or are they akin to parenthood; there is no parenthood until there are parents and children? That is, is there no space and time until there are things with spatial properties and processes with temporal durations?"

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