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.
This self portrait is painted with translucent pigments on a transparent layer of acrylic plastic. The colours glow with the back light.
Partially Present
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.
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
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