A friend of mine emailed me about the artist John Pugh.  I had never heard of him.  As it turns out, John Pugh is an amazing Trompe l’oeil artist from California.  His studio is actually located in the upper peaks of the Santa Cruz mountains.  Trompe l’oeil….what is it?  What little I remember from my college art history classes (which seems like a million years ago) are paintings like these:

Ceiling Oculus - Andrea Mantegna 1471-74

Ceiling Oculus - Andrea Mantegna 1471-74

Ceiling in the Church of St Ignazio - Andrea Pozzo 1685-94

Ceiling in the Church of St Ignazio - Andrea Pozzo 1685-94

The official definition of Trompe l’oeil is the art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear three dimensional, instead of actually being a two dimensional painting.

Below are the kind of Trompe l’oeil murals John Pugh paints:

Taylor Hall, California Stae University

Taylor Hall, California Stae University

Bay in a Bottle

Bay in a Bottle

The passer-by is part of this mural and the next mural.

Main Street

Main Street

John Pugh

John Pugh

“I have found that the ‘language’ of life-size illusions allow me to communicate with a very large audience.  It seems almost universal that people take delight in being visually tricked.  Once captivated by the illusion, the viewers are lured to cross an artistic threshold and thus seduced into exploring the concept of the piece.”  -  John Pugh