Seeing Things as They Actually Are

The human brain seeks out patterns. Our eyes lie to us all the time. No seriously, they do. That’s how optical illusions work. Or, for instance, after a car accident we may recall broken glass, and then look at scene photos and realize there wasn’t any broken glass. Our brains filled in that detail for us so convincingly that it is now part of a vivid memory. It is not a character flaw; it does not mean that you cannot be trusted. It is just part of our physical and neurological makeup. If the brain associates one thing with another, or we expect to see something, we do.

As an artist I learn to suppress that mental process. There’s tricks that artists do. Like if you’re drawing from a reference photo you can turn the photo upside down and try to draw the image that way. Weirdly it comes out more accurate than if you had done it right side up. It’s because you interrupted all of the brains expectations. It is not a pattern our brain has processed every day, as we don’t see upside down. (Actually images do hit the retina upside down, but our eyes and brain have a process for that too.) https://bceye.com/retinal-image-inverted-reversed/ 

Anyway. As an artist I question what I’m seeing all the time. I start comparing distances and shapes and analyzing how things relate and look, how they might be comprised. I have to consciously try to see things as they actually are. Another artistic example is “no-forehead syndrome,” it happens when artists are learning to draw portraits and they have a habit of making the foreheads too small. It’s because we perceive the eyes as being towards the top of the head, when in reality the eyes are in the very center of the head.

I think of it as a larger life lesson. Our eyes constantly deceive us. Our perception fails us. We must consciously -with intentional effort- see things as they are and be objective.