Since being recently intrigued by Susan’s post (Deadly Performance Art) about interactive exhibits, I just found another artist that includes human beings in her actual artwork while surfing a website theawesomer.com. When first looking at her works, it seems very possible that it is just like any other traditional painting: done with a paint brush on a canvas. However, if you study it more closely, you realize that it is a photograph of a human being that has physically been painted. This type of artwork is classified as trompe l’oeil, a style of painting that gives an illusion of photographic reality which Meade has creatively taken to the next level.
Meade takes a 3D scene and turns it into a two dimensional photograph. She paints the representation of the person directly onto the person’s skin. This way, the people and what Meade is having them represent are the same thing. It is almost as if these subjects are caricatures of themselves. When looking at Meade’s creations, the relationship between what is real (meaning the person’s actual features) and what is an interpretation of the image becomes extremely blurry. What do you see when you look at her pictures?
Below are two pictures: the first is of Meade creating the work of art and the second is of the actual photograph of the painting, which goes on display as the final finished piece.
If you’d like to see more of Meade’s work, click here.
That’s incredible… I can’t even begin to understand the complexity of that. When you look at the art quickly, it looks so simple, like you could paint it yourself. Meade takes it to the next level, however. I can tell that this requires significant understanding of both still-life and abstract art in order to blur the lines between them.
Are you familiar with the percussion ensemble Blue Man Group? This looks like one of the players on a break. the combination of painting, three dimensionality, performance art and Photography makes this a very interesting combination. It also made me think of those “living statue” street performers who stand motionless all day and pose for pictures…
I think this is really exciting. It’s really interesting how Meade combines fantasy with reality, because there is actually a live component to her work, but there is a “traditional” feel to the entire work. I really liked “Transit,” one of her pictures in the link you posted, because it really highlights this idea. The man in the photo looks like a cartoon character just dropped into reality. This is a really great idea that I don’t think has ever been done before.
I thought this was such a cool idea and the finished product looks so convincing. The first picture you chose to put in the post looks a little Photoshopped to me because it looks like a mixing of two worlds: a realistic one and then a cartoonized one. I also think that taking a photograph of the final piece, rather than displaying it in 3-D, is another brilliant idea because it gives the illusion that it is really a painting.