“I am the keeper of the jewel of Masquerade, which lies waiting safe inside me for you or eternity” Kit Williams, Introduction to Masquerade
“What I wanted to do was to retain the format of a book but then do something different. If I was going to spend two or three years doing sixteen paintings, I didn’t want them to be just flicked through and put down. That’s why the perspective is odd in some of the Masquerade pictures, and why others overlap their borders.
Sometimes things come straight out at you. All to make you look really closely. “
Hidden Images
• Cryptomorph: an image that harbors another image as its secret or solution
• Aleamorph: a chance image
• Anamorph: a distorted image that only becomes legible when viewed the right way
Rorschach Test
Hans Holbein: The Ambassadors (1533)
Masquerade, Kit Williams
“Within the pages of this book there is a story told of love, adventures, fortunes lost, and a jewel of solid gold. To solve the hidden riddle, you must use your eyes and find the hare in every picture that may point you to the prize.”
Solution
CATHERINE’S
LONG FINGER
OVER
SHADOWS
EARTH
BURIED
YELLOW
AMULET
MIDDAY
POINTS
THE
HOUR
IN
LIGHT OF EQUINOX
LOOK YOU
Apophenia
Williams on Masquerade: “It became a sort of cult, and because of that people read much more into it than I put there,' he has said.
'People felt I'd included their dead grandfather, that sort of thing. It never stops.”
