Our recent trip to Southeast Asia reminded me of my many paintings from our earlier trips to this fascinating part of the world. While painting the first of these, Bali, I discovered how to 'hide' images by slightly varying the colors of the patterns. If you look closely at this painting of terraced rice fields in the mountains, two garuda birds (cultural symbols of the region) can be seen floating in the sky.
In a close-up, the image is much easier to see.
Bali was also the first painting in which I 'hid' my signature within the patterns. Now one of the first things people do when they see one of my paintings is search for the signature.
Here is a close-up of the Bali signature. It can be quite challenging to find on many of my paintings.
Using hidden images was so intriguing that I used them in many more of my Southeast Asia paintings.
Angkor Wat, the ancient temple complex, is the highlight of any trip to Cambodia. However as wonderful as it and the rest of Cambodia are, the bloody history of the Khmer Rouge still lingers. In Angkor Why? as the name implies , the temple's beauty is haunted by the hidden skulls overlooking it.
A close-up shows one of these skulls more clearly.
There are also hidden images of stone carvings on the temple walls such as this one above the main doorway.
Images are even hidden in the portrait Mountain Lady Vietnam. Look closely and see if you can find any of them. These are more challenging to find.
Hint: Images of four celestial animals (the tiger, the bird, the turtle and the dragon) are hidden in the green background clockwise from lower left to lower right. In this case when I say hidden, I mean it!
The images in Haunted Temple Dancer are more obvious.
This painting was inspired by the many heavenly dancing girl carvings (Apsaras) on ancient temples throughout Southeast Asia. Although the carvings have deteriorated over the many centuries, they are still magnificent. On both sides of this stylized Apsara carving in its original glory are ghost dancers foreshadowing its less-glorious future state.
Hidden images are also included in some of my other paintings. The painting of our cat Teelka has her name hidden in large letters. Can you find it?
A close-up of the background between her ears might help, although it's still well hidden.
Finally Sunday on Turtle Pond has many turtles hidden throughout the pond. How many can you find? (I'll discuss the other creatures in this painting in a later blog.)
As you see, contextural paintings allow for all kinds of images to be 'hidden' among the patterns, making them more interesting and fun to both paint and view .