Central Virginia artist practices art of illusion

Legend has it that in about 400 B.C., two well-known Greek artists competed to see who could create the most realistic painting.

The first, Zeuxis, painted a still life that fooled a group of birds into flying down from the sky to peck at the painted grapes.

Feeling triumphant, Zeuxis turned to his competitor, Parrhasius, and told him to pull the curtains back to reveal his painting. But the joke was on Zeuxis — the curtains were actually part of the painting.

Score one for Parrhasius.

Both were trompe l’oeil artists. In French, trompe l’oeil means to fool the eye.

“It was an optical illusion,” says Martha Johnson, curator of the Maier Museum of Art. “It gives the illusion that the object (in the painting) is in your space.”

The art form has its roots in ancient Greece and Rome, but “people have been painting on their walls since the cavemen,” says Gladys resident Joanne Jordan Nash, a trompe l’oeil artist. “It’s just gotten more sophisticated.”

According to the Trompe l’Oeil Artists of America, the earliest examples of it still in existence are mosaic floors and frescoes at Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy.

The style resurfaced in the form of mural painting during the Renaissance and Baroque eras in Europe, according to AskArt.com. It was used to make churches and palaces look bigger than they actually were by opening up a ceiling or wall with a mural.

It even pervades our pop culture. Look at the Road Runner cartoons, when Wile E. Coyote would paint a tunnel onto a wall, making it look like the road kept going. Somehow the Road Runner would always get through, but once the coyote tried, he’d smash into the wall. That’s a modern-day trompe l’oeil.

Today, most trompe l’oeil paintings are still lifes of objects small enough to be represented in their real size.

“It predates photography,” Johnson says. “It was this artistic challenge to make something as realistic as possible.”

There are still those who do the more traditional murals, like Nash, who has been studying and painting them since the 1990s.

“I saw my first trompe l’oeil mural, and I was so amazed by it,” she says. “I kept thinking, ‘I know I can do that.’”

Nash went to study with a woman in Washington, and “it became an addiction,” she says. “To be able to create space and depth on a flat surface is, I think, phenomenal. There’s something about it that just charges my batteries.”

Since then, she has studied with well-known trompe l’oeil and mural artists, like Nicola Vigini and Pascal Amblard, and has traveled to Italy to see some ancient examples of it.

“Seeing something in reality, in its home, in its own environment, is something you just can’t describe,” Nash says.

Many consider trompe l’oeil to be one of the most demanding fine art forms.

“It is so intense because there are a lot of laws that go along with it in terms of perspective,” Nash says, adding that it’s all about light and shadow — “the keys to tricking the eye into going, ‘Oh, it’s real.’
“You have to be disciplined (and) you have to be focused. Every stroke means something.”

When it comes to creating that depth and perspective, Nash says there’s a complicated formula that trompe l’oeil artists apply.

She started out doing arabesques, an application that repeats geometric forms of plants and animals, and grotesques, a similar decorative form characterized by garlands and animal figures.

“They were often scary motifs designed to keep away evil spirits,” says Nash, who studied the form under Vigini.

Nash eventually began doing mural work, first for herself and later for friends and family. Word spread, and she began fielding phone calls from more and more people who wanted her to paint something for their homes.

Now, she mostly does commission work on murals and faux finishes on walls, cabinetry and even ceilings.

In a Richmond home, she painted a fake window looking out onto Paris’ Montmartre district. For another, smaller project, Nash painted a horseshoe onto a homeowners’ new bar, and it looks like a real one is hanging there.

“Sometimes the small things are most effective. They’re the most surprising,” she says. “I just think they’re so fun to have in the house.”

They can be large scale, too.

“I’ve (seen) artists who’ve done a whole wall where (it looks like) the wall has fallen out, and you’re looking at blue skies and airplanes.”

Before doing anything in a home, Nash figures out from what point the piece will be viewed most often, and then she paints it from that perspective. A mural will look different if you’re supposed to look at it straight on instead of at an angle, she says.

Next, she sketches everything out and then paints it by hand (some mural artists use airbrushing).

If she’s doing something for a large wall or ceiling, she usually paints it on canvas first and later installs it.

The faux finishing on cabinets, floors and walls is also considered trompe l’oeil, particularly marble work. During her first trip to Italy, Nash visited a couple old churches that used a faux marble finish on the walls because they couldn’t afford the real thing.

“Honestly, unless you put your hand on it and felt it, you couldn’t tell the difference between the real and the fake,” she says.

That urge to reach out and touch it is what she strives for in all of her work.

“The most rewarding thing is when they (touch it) and go, ‘That’s not real?’ I always think if they’ve touched it, my work here is done.”