BLINKING: Stop Motion Mural Art in Amsterdam
Blinking is a stop motion mural I created in Amsterdam, painted and repainted on the same wall in layers, each version photographed to form a looping animation. This project for me, wasn’t just about creating a visual experiment. It became something deeper, a way of thinking through how we see, how we focus, and how we define ourselves. it's a meditation on the nature of perception, attention, and identity, rooted in ideas from psychology and philosophy.
Painting as Process: A STOP MOTION ANIMATION
Rather than creating one final image, I painted the eyes over and over again, each time with subtle variations, capturing every stage in photos. These frames form a stop motion animation, where each new version replaces the last but never completely erases it.
Just like a thought or memory, each layer leaves a trace beneath the surface. The result is a mural in constant flux, reflecting how the human mind processes experience: not in straight lines, but in loops, jumps, and returns.
The Psychology and Philosophy Behind Blinking
Blinking is inspired by the way we make sense of the world, not through a seamless stream of experience, but through interruptions. Gaps. Moments that don’t quite line up. Meaning comes from how we piece things back together.
Our attention doesn’t hold steady. It flickers, like an involuntary blink. That flicker shapes what we see, what we miss, and what we think is real. This mural mirrors that rhythm, appearing, disappearing, returning again. Each blink holds both loss and renewal.
Blinking is such a simple act, automatic, barely noticed, but it’s also deeply symbolic. It’s the space between seeing and not seeing. Between presence and absence. And in that space, the mind does something magical: it fills in the blanks. It reconstructs. That’s where meaning lives, in the in-between.
Philosophically, blinking feels like a threshold. A liminal space between knowing and not knowing. It’s where intuition lives, where identity can shift. With this mural, I wanted to invite people into that space, to pause with it, and maybe see themselves differently for a moment.
Stop Motion + Muralism: A Hybrid Visual Language
With Blinking, I wanted to challenge the static nature of traditional murals by merging it with time-based animation. The mural becomes more than a surface, it becomes a visual and symbolic loop, a rhythm, a cycle of becoming.
This isn’t a piece that ends, it loops, reflecting the way we return to ideas, rewrite ourselves, and reinvent our narratives again and again.