Another photo-realist painting constructed using the Morley technique (see Prawns). The subject matter is once again as in all photo-realist paintings not the subject of the photograph. In this case a tightly cropped action shot of a horse-race is more or less inconsequential to the construction of the painting, which is entirely concerned with the reproduction of the abstract patterns of ink which the human mind perceives as a ‘realistic’ depiction of a scene.

As can be seen in this enlargement of the hedge area of the painting, the quite crude reproduction of the green and black pattern of the colour shapes of the printed inks only resolves itself into the illusion of a hedge when seen in context with the other patterns of colours which the mind resolves into horses and riders. This is of the course the manner in which all illusionist reproduction works, and indeed the very act of visual perception itself, the act of resolving sensory data into a comprehensible ‘real world’.

This brings us back once again to the forefather of photo-realism Salvador Dali whose ‘Paranoiac-Critical Method’ aimed at disrupting this very process. Dali wrote, “We see what we have some reason for seeing, above all what we believe we are going to see. If the reason or the belief is upset - we see something else.”