Ah, nothing like the opulent details of a gorgeous Persian rug…only these are not rugs. Jason Seif paints trompe l’oeil rugs, life sized.
The subtle shading makes one feel as if staring at a rug that has spent years in a home and is starting to show a little natural wear and tear. Well done.
I recently stumbled upon Brent Estabrook’s vibrant paintings, which range from cohesive, vivid realism, to the abstract and deconstructed.
Estabrook got his Doctorate in Dental Surgery, practiced for one day, and left the field to pursue his need to paint (a gutsy move, but a good one with this kind of talent!). His paintings are able to conjure up the nostalgia of childhood dreams…
…memories of when all was possible and world was magic. We remember the toys, the textures, the stories we crafted around items we held dear.
I purposely made mention of these works being photorealistic rather than actual photographs in the title of this post, because there’s absolutely no way I would have been able to tell the difference.
Dirk Dzimirsky is one of the most phenomenal photorealism/hyperrealism artists I’ve ever seen. Those featured here are charcoal/graphite, but he paints just as well.
Kazuhiro Tsuji is a large scale hyperrealist sculptor, who taught himself to imitate life through trial, error and meticulous mimicry.
He is most famous for his portraits of Dali, Lincoln, Warhol and Dick Smith (his original mentor whom he contacted through Fangoria Magazine in 1987).
Incredible detail…
To give you an idea of the scale:
It may look like a snapshot of some garbage, but Ivan Hoo specializes in photorealistic sketches.
This is trompe l’oiel at its finest. Can you believe this dog is not three dimensional, but sketched with pencils and pastels on a flat piece of wood?
Look at the intricacies of human skin he captures!
Jean-Francois Rauzier makes hyperreal digital urban “utopias” and nature scenes that are utterly mesmerizing to look at.
In 2002, he created the “Hyperphoto”, a concept which enables him to deal with the impossible: to combine both infinitely big and infinitely small things in one same image, out of time. To simulate the illusion of reality, Jean-François Rauzier first had to cope with all the inherent limits inherent of the photographic and technological equipment. He found his way by juxtaposing, duplicating, twisting images, making it possible for him to reproduce human vision more accurately. This way, he generated a genuine numerical puzzle, in which the pieces, cut out, “drawn again”, come up along on top of the imagination of the artist.
His technique produces some truly fascinating images (ooooh…I love the one below!).
Something about the geometric nature is grandly appealing to the eye; perhaps it is our innate human tendency to seek structure and order in our surroundings.
These are pieces of truth, kaleidoscopically intertwined into something magical…
While the whole concept of hyperrealism is to defy the eye in mimicry of real scenery or photographs, I’m nevertheless stunned to see the heights of talent some artists reach in this area. Case in point: Jason de Graaf.
The exactness of proportion and contour needed to pull off multiple reflective spheres in this kind of work is nothing short of incredible.
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In reference to his work, he states “My paintings are about staging an alternate reality, an illusion of verisimilitude on the painted surface. I try to use objects as a vehicle to express myself, tell a story or least hint at something beyond what is actually painted. Therefore I try to choose objects that have meaning to me or are artifacts from my life.”
SheWalksSoftly 