[Photos] Artist paints her mother with incredible detail

[Photos] Artist paints her mother with incredible detail

At first glance, everything about this seems in order. It’s an expertly executed portrait of an elderly woman, seemingly gentle, proper, peaceful. And then you spot the distortions. And I think it’s significant that there are effects mimicking both motion-blurring and double vision, and that they aren’t exclusive to the figurine. To me, this communicates simply that something is off with the entire lens we’re using to view her. That, perhaps, we should not trust our original perception of a gentle soul. And with that in mind, I revisit her face, and I no longer see simply a woman turning her head to strike a favorable pose, but someone looking both hopefully and mischievously toward the light. I imagine her thinking, “Why am I sitting here with all these empty, lifeless dishes? I want to be over there, out in the daylight”