#45: Reimagining Creation Through Moiré

Some images are so deeply ingrained in culture that they feel eternal. Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam is one of them — two hands, almost touching, carrying centuries of meaning about divinity, humanity, and connection.

It’s an image I keep returning to in my mind. And now, I’m beginning a variation of it — not in fresco, but through my moiré portrait project.

Only One Hand at a Time

The idea is simple, but strange: I’m painting just the two hands, but using the moiré illusion so that only one is visible at any given moment. When you shift your perspective, the other hand appears while the first fades away.

They never appear together.

That absence, that impossibility of overlap, is what interests me most. In our world today, the meeting of God and man feels fractured, unstable, even impossible. The illusion captures that sense of disconnection — not through words or symbolism, but through the simple fact that the two forms can’t occupy the same space.

Why Moiré Matters Here

The moiré technique feels perfectly suited to this subject. It’s all about interference, about images colliding and obscuring each other. The pattern creates movement and presence, but also absence — a strange, shifting instability.

In The Creation of Adam, the drama lies in what isn’t there — the tiny gap between the fingers. By reworking it so the hands can never appear together, I’m leaning into that tension, making the absence louder than the connection.

A Contemporary Reimagining

I don’t want to reproduce Michelangelo’s fresco. That would be pointless — the original already exists in all its grandeur. What I want is to use its language, its symbolism, and filter it through a contemporary lens. To ask: what does this moment mean today?

For me, the moiré technique adds another layer: a reminder that truth itself feels unstable, fragmented, shifting depending on where you stand.

The Start of Something Bigger

This will be my first attempt to bring a subject of such cultural weight into my moiré experiments. It feels ambitious, even daunting. But it also feels right.

Because if this project is about perception, interference, and instability, what better image to explore than the one that has, for centuries, symbolised divine certainty?

And what better way to begin than with two hands that can never quite meet?

.M.

Be real.

Make art.

If you’d like to learn more about my creative process or see my latest work, feel free to reach out or check out the rest of my website.