This isn't a photograph, a photoshop, or a digital illustration. This view through a rain-soaked car windshield is actually an oil painting by Gregory Thielker. It's amazing. And there are more.


Thielker uses the common experience of peering through a rain-soaked car window to explore how our perception of our environment is shaped by how we view it. It's a reminder that the distortions we see, like the painting itself, are merely a representation of it through another medium.

Looking at these is akin to walking through a city or neighborhood you've only driven through. It's immediately familiar but new details emerge slowly as you review it. Or, to put it in Thielker's art-speak:

In the case of driving, the abstraction and distortion of the water are indexical to the windshield (as smoke can be traced to fire). The result is that painting, per se, can summon a pre-verbal experience- slipping outside of static referents and into a gestalt of sensation, both fixed and fluid.


Exactly, though we're not sure "indexical" is a real word.

[BuzzFeed via Gawker]