Point of View

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

The Street Musician, Venice (detail) 40 x 30” Oil

We have been enjoying the book The Artist’s Eyes: Vision and the History of Art, by ophthalmologists Michael Marmor and James G. Ravine. One of our favorites among the many fascinating subjects they cover, is the eerie phenomenon or illusion in some portraits that the subject’s eyes follow you no matter where you stand in the room. The eyes in the image above are from a portrait John painted, The Street Musician, Venice. Visitors to the studio often remark that the figure seems to follow them around the room. There was no plan or intention to create this effect. It just comes with painting any figure with a fixed gaze looking at the viewer. Because the portrait is a flat two-dimensional representation, it cannot change in perspective as we move around it. The directional cues are fixed and so it must always gaze at us. This phenomenon has often been referred to as “life-like”, but of course, it is anything but…