When you look at clouds you might make out the shape of a dog, or when you look at a tree you might recognise eyes, nose and mouth in the bark. This type of visual perception is called pareidolia and it can be manipulated to a degree depending on our mindset and choices. You can easily imagine how this can be exploited to help people to see things in a particular way.

I explore pareidolia using drawing, combining it with observational and experimental drawing and design.

In the drawings for Conspiracy, I’ve used simple runs of ink as the ground breaker, then familiarities appear within the positive and negative spaces - sometimes immediately and sometimes gradually. Depending on the strength of the apparition I either go with it, or manipulate it into the subject that I want. The colours in most of these drawings are ink marker which I’ve used in a pixelated way to contrast with the natural flow of the original lines.

The subject I was searching for was figures bathing. Some were easy to locate, others hard to extract from the complexity. Other insistent visions pushed forward including birds, seated figures and a portrait.

Realising my ink markers would fade out over time I changed over to acrylic ink and brush, and began to augment the natural ink runs rather than looking for objects. I surrounded the lines using new lines of colour gradations. Now more images broke through - more abstract and expressive. A lightening strike; a neon city scene. The (exceptionally) repetitive process was therapeutic.

Developments from this group of artworks are being taken forward into my next explorations, the working title of which is Chaos and Order.