These Stunning Optical Illusion Paintings By Robert Gonsalves Will Tie Your Brain In Knots

Canadian artist Robert Gonsalves creates stunning surrealist paintings with optical mindmelts that twist your brain into switching from one perspective to another.

Unsurprisingly, he says he takes inspiration from the work of Salvador Dalí, Rene Magritte, and MC Escher—and his pictures are like a combination of surrealism and the brain-frying illusions of Escher.

They have a haunting, dream-like quality and Gonsalves says that "A childhood of daydreaming and drawing has evolved into a career of making paintings that are primarily a celebration of imagination." His paintings have also been used to illustrate three children's books Imagine a Night, Imagine a Day, and Imagine a Place.

Robert says of his work, "I started doing my first paintings when i was a teenager, i think it was the moment when I realized that creating a painting from my imagination seem to create window into another world realizing that it's something that I wanted to achieve, that was the moment i felt excited. I just went from one year at art college at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and i went back to school for architecture and i went on to work full-time in architecture for five years, that's one of the reasons why you'll see a lot of architectural subject matter."

You can find out more information on his Facebook page and website.