Horror and Art

 Art is considered subjective. We all look at paintings in our own way, and draw from it our own interpretation. It is all perception. We look at things the way we want to look at them. The subject may remain the same, but it is our reactions that are unique. 

There have been some artists who have turned their paintings into puzzles just to see how people react to it and if they take in every aspect of the painting. 

For instance, Martin Handford, the creator of Where’s Waldo/Wally created a book for children with double page spreads of puzzles wherein the reader had to search for the titular character. The scene will try to distract and confuse the reader by inserting plenty of comical situations occurring in the background. 

Then there’s Gergley Dudas, also known as Dudolf who creates perhaps the most challenging puzzles. His puzzles usually comprise of small animals, all of them looking similar. The challenge is to find that one thing/animal/being that doesn’t fit. Sounds easy, but the puzzles can be difficult and you will find yourself clicking for the answer. 

You can check out some of the puzzles here 

And then there’s Jeff Lee Johnson, an artist known for creating horror and fantasy themed paintings. The more you look at it, the more frightening it becomes. That’s some of the article headings you must have seen online. 

Jeff Lee Johnson’s paintings seem normal at first. It’s either just an ordinary beach day, a ride in the street, a meal at a restaurant, just the normal plain old stuff. But when you zoom in, that is when you see the terrifying things hiding in the painting. 

The beach one for instance: There’s a man holding a bloody knife, a dead man hangs from the balcony, the woman sitting with the man doesn’t have legs but is quite possibly a mermaid or an octopus. 

The other paintings show different places, but they have a few things in common, like people with tentacles for limbs, or smoke with skull faces, or giant spiders, splatters of blood…

Truly, the more you look, the more terrifying things become. 

You can check out the horror gallery here