Portraits of Perception

Amy Turnbull’s work explores complexities of visual perception in our digital era. Seeing is a dance between bottom-up and top-down mental processing. Our eyes take in intricate arrays, and our brains use pre-existing schema to direct how we see. The self is viewed through a flexing mirror. Ultimately, humans are meaning-makers and pattern-seekers, striving to create order and connection from ocular flow.

Self is a slippery construction. I look at my reflection in a piece of warped foil. The image is exaggerated and multiplied, and provides perpetually shifting information. Two faces converge and separate, using their phones to approach and avoid. The under layers have broad strokes but multiple lines ripple over the surface. Individual marks join to create arrays. Arrays of similar colors and values coalesce into shapes. Repeated shapes begin to form patterns. The patterns act as a filter, sometimes obscuring the information beneath, and sometimes enhancing it. What we already know influences how we see. We construct our experiences, signals both merging us together and wedging us apart. I am understanding more consciously now, bringing patterns to the surface, systems exposed.