The urge to create illusions, recreate scenes and play visual jokes has been around for a long time, in fact they've been found in the ruins of Pompei!  "Trompe L'oeil" is a French term that means "fool the eye."  A trompe l'oeil work is usually created with paint, but there are works that have been created in pencil, and even in veneers.  It is a sophisticated attempt to fool you the viewer into thinking that the artist's rendering is, in fact, the real thing.  It becomes even more fun when what see challenges your beliefs about what can be real, where reality stops and illusion begins.

This form of "illusionist" painting can be used on a small scale to place a sleeping cat over a doorway, or on a very large scale to turn an unsightly concrete building wall into an old gaslit city street.  Michelangelo's work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is perhaps the best known example of trompe l'oeil in the world.  It actually covers a previous trompe l'oeil depiction of a starry night sky!

A trompe l'oeil artist can add a window with a beautiful view of lavender fields in Provence to a wall in a dark apartment, a curio case filled with exotic artifacts to a boring wall, or an angel peeking out of a frame when you glance down a narrow hallway. Trompe l'oeil has been used to turn a child's room into the Hundred Acre Wood from A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories, to turn a bedroom into a shack on a deserted beach, to add a skylight to a hallway ceiling, and to add an entire sunlit hallway with gracious descending stairs to the end wall of a small dining room.

Commercally, companies have used trompe l'oeil to advertise their vision, products or expertise, to enliven and expand conference rooms and lobbies, and to show their evolution and history. Doctors put them in their lobbies to help waiting patients relax. Dentists put them on a wall of their examining rooms for the same reason.

Trompe L'oeil works have been used to:

• Expand and brighten small, claustrophobic spaces
• Add interest to bland spaces
• Play visual jokes, from the very subtle or absolutely outlandish
• Amaze, thereby drawing and capturing the viewer's attention
• Inspire awe, establishing authority
• Add a touch of whimsy
• Provide the viewer with a puzzle to solve
• Inspire imagination and reverie
• Capture and express memories and interests

To find out more about what has been done with trompe l'oeil, use your favorite Internet search engine to look up the term. For example, here's are two Google links to get you started:

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For more detailed information how trompe l'oeil is done, just click on: