Welcome to this showcase of people and places by Caspar de Bono.
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Translucent palette
I am both an organised person who plans ahead and, influenced by my father, curious to experiment and improvise as I progress. I draw on my university studies into the nature of perception as a source of ideas.
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This self portrait is painted with translucent pigments on a transparent layer of acrylic plastic. The colours glow with the back light.
Partially Present
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​​​A painting can be portraiture and art, but not simultaneously. Our attention switches to one or the other, the recognition of the person or the artistic treatment.
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I applied nine measurement rules used in computer-based facial recognition to a self portrait. I disassociated them to create an image that flipped between two states. The portrait state is a technically accurate likeness using the ratios of facial recognition. A computer would recognise me. However, because the features are disassociated, I am only partially present. If my presence no longer holds the viewer's attention, it wanders to consider the artistic treatment.
​​​​Imagine you are a newborn looking at this image. In the 1960s, Frantz used this to show that newborns preferred a face-like pattern to a random arrangement of facial features. We are predisposed to recognise faces. The face is more important than the shapes.​​​
​The Necker Cube is an analogy for two possible states that don't exist simultaneously. Either one face or the other comes forward. I created this two colour version in 1993 at University to explore whether colour is a cue to depth perception. If so, the red face should appear forward more often than blue. One state is dominant.
Blue Prints
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Identity is more than a facial likeness. If the person I am painting a portrait of is creative then I like to create a blue print background of something graphical created by them. Their handwriting, drawings or designs. Something of them.
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This ideas was further developed in this portrait painted on five layers of plastic. It is a challenge to the idea that paintings are flat. Seen in person the original painting has a parallax effect as the layers move when the viewer moves.
Read more about this blue print painting​