Pareidolia

Carol Emmas

Even though we are not aware of it, our brains are constantly working to make sense of everything around us, from the people we know, to the items we own, to the landscapes either that we recognise or that are new to us. Most of what we see in our everyday lives is based on information being factual, but the way I approach my work is through the so-called Type 1 Error, or the false positive; in other words, I try to find landscapes where none really exist. The term for this is pareidolia, derived from the Greek words para (resembling) and eidola (apparition). The Rorschach test is a prime example of how our eyes can perceive different images where no specific image is present. Looking at and studying textures close-up and in depth has always fascinated me - I like to search beyond what is obvious and look towards the unknown and unfathomable and the half real, half imagined. The possibility of what I can do artistically with the likes of rusting metal or peeling paint excites me and continues to drive me forward to look for the sometimes seemingly impossible.

I didn’t know what the word art meant, but when he told me it immediately became my favourite word and to this day it remains so. I was never able to translate the vision in my head onto canvas in a way that I found satisfactory, but through the camera I found that I could - there is something that I prefer about the camera being the conduit between me and the end result, a symbiotic relationship between the mechanical and the intuitive that I enjoy. There is no more fulfilling a job for me than to go out with my camera and look for visual treasures.

What I find most fascinating is how something that forms naturally can recreate itself in its own image, such as frost on windows, or how the play on perspective enables drone photography of rivers and tributaries to take on the look of trees and landscapes. The wonder of fractal geometry means that I can create images akin to drone pictures, but through a macro lens.

There is a staggering amount of beauty in the world but sometimes it prefers to remain hidden - this is the beauty I search for. I have always preferred the less obvious; my ‘Woodland’ series is taken from the side of an old oil drum, the textures created from years of being subjected to the elements; the ‘On Deck’ series (large works at 86 x 86 cm) from a scraping of bodyfiller on the side of a trailer, but that now resembles Patrick Heron-like coastal images. Somehow, I have been able to feed found patterns into my own nostalgia for the sea, the shore and my years of sailing around the Mediterranean and Ionian coasts. Although I use digital processing, I prefer the images to remain as close to the initial shot as possible. I am quite evangelical about never changing the base image or cloning unless absolutely necessary, although an image that maybe hiding beneath thousands of imperfections can take weeks to uncover, usually by taking out one tiny dot at a time. In such cases, I’ll listen to minimalist, repetitive or experimental instrumental music such as Richard

Skelton, hoping that the images will absorb his natural-world vibe. Neither do I ever add anything to the imagesI’ve tried to experiment in this way, but feel that any level of tampering ruins the purity of the image. Occasionally, however, I will add something painterly with a brush if I feel that it will add something without detracting from the image. I see myself more as a restoration artist trying to conserve and preserve what nature has given me.