Theory of Mind

2018

Three pairs of dark eyes sit overlaid on top of each other staring at the viewer, with a singular set of fierce brows conveying a brooding intensity. Various colors and textures are rendered in the background, mostly in electric swirls, with a central conveyer belt of eyes leading through its center.

Technique

Like with my piece Harmony, I wanted to make something more classically psychedelic—but unlike that later work, I wanted this one to have more feminine fierceness, which inspired most of the colors as well as the harsh eyeliner-like blacks.

I painted both sets of eyes just the once before stacking them, but then detailed each separately so that they felt slightly different from one another. The central vertical sweep came second to last; the actual finishing touch were the eyes in that sweep, along with the smaller eye reflections one either side of the main eye stack, which I made unbalanced to create the impression of a skewed perspective without actually painting something outside of standard flat perspective.