Description

Our first exploration based on the world of optical illusions, ‘Trust your heart’ is guaranteed to move you, if only in the eye department!

One of the other art forms we have admired which also makes great use of black and white is the area of optical illusions. The starting point for this piece was to explore the extent that optical illusions would translate to the world of paper cutting. The design is a classic optical illusion which features alternating black and white rectangles of identical size that are arranged in such a way that they appear to change shape and move.

We couldn’t leave it there so we wondered if it would still work if we embedded a message in the middle of the design. Having finished our working design we began cutting, again completely by hand (no rulers!). We knew it worked as a printed design but we had however failed to take into account the challenge of subsequently cutting hundreds of precise straight lines when those lines all too often appear to be moving in front of your eyes!!!

The result was having to complete this piece in stages of no more than 15 minutes at a time which was the limit our eyes could cope with before head and eye aches set it. We think you’ll agree it was worth it with the finished result being not only a stunning papercut, but one you can’t help but look at, even if your eyes protest.

Signed by the artists, ‘Trust your heart’ is a genuine 1/1 papercut on archival matte paper, back mounted on archival quality mountboard and framed in in a black, custom-made solid wood box frame.

Framed dimensions: 625 mm (w) x 450 mm (h)