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3d render retro cell phone nokia trompe l'oeil after william harnett using maya faithful colt
The Faithful Colt (After William Harnett)

faithful colt trompe l'oeil painting by william harnett
The Faithful Colt, by William Harnett (1890)

portfolio > trompe l'oeil

Trompe l'oeil Series (After William Harnett)
Framed 3D Digital Prints on Canvas, dimensions vary, 2007

I’ve always had an interest in the American still-life painter, William Michael Harnett (1848-1892).  He was famous for his reinvention of the Trompe L’Oeil (“to fool the eye”) style of still-life painting.  Harnett’s paintings of objects from the life of the bourgeois class were rumored to trick viewers into thinking that it was not a painting on the wall, but actual objects hanging in front of them.  Although he lived more than a century ago, Harnett was living my dream – he was creating a reality that wasn’t there, through his struggle for perfection, deception, and representation of desired objects. Harnett utilized illusionistic techniques by demanding that his viewers straddle the fence between the three-dimensional and the two-dimensional world.  With Harnett as my guide, I have aimed to perform a Trompe L’Oeil – leading the viewer into a new realm of alternative representation, channeled through digitally rendered images that reference 1980's corporate culture.

 

 

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