The words “perception” and “optics” often make one think of the dizzying patterns, high key colors, and psychedelic images of Op Art from the 1960s and 70s. However, optical and illusory effects have been observed, recreated, and mimicked in paintings and drawings by artists throughout art history. Consider trompe-l’oeil, pointillism, optical color mixing, and hyper-realism as examples. Many illusory effects are intended by an artist to accurately portray dimensional space using multipoint perspective as well as modeling shadows, leveraging light sources and chiaroscuro to render the volume of forms and make them almost palpable. Each, a “trick” of the eye one way or another. However, there are also times when studio processes and color palettes, alone or in combination with other influences, create unintended and interesting, visually challenging imagery, sort of a process dependent “happy accident”. In some instances, it is not a complete image nor what the brain thinks it sees; hence it drifts into percept
