Johannes Stötter continues to mesmerize fans, audiences and art enthusiasts with his mind-boggling body painting illusions, this time with his newest creation, “Butterfly”. As a symbol of Johannes’s happiness and love, he dedicated this beautiful bodypainting to his little daughter Linnéa. A special moment is sometimes more special when shared with others, and when Johannes posted a photo of his butterfly creation on social media, he expressed with much warmth, “This picture makes me sooo happy! I share it in the hope that it has the same effect on all of you”.
The photo portrays a bright colored butterfly resting gracefully upon a big yellow flower. Looking closer into the details, one can barely notice the features of a human body within the art which is the beauty of Johannes’s bodypainting illusions. The idea behind this was not created overnight, but developed and perfected over 3 years. While looking at butterfly imagery, Johannes’s creative mind saw not only the beauty, but the, uniform and distinctive shape of the butterfly. With this in mind, he visualized the symmetrical shape being formed by the human body, in such a way that many people may not imagine.
Like the life stages of a butterfly, Johannes brought his idea to life, starting with a small sketch of the positioning, which was re-created on a real person. He drew a larger sketch next, adding color, details, dimension and structure; this was when the visuals started to emerge. After one week of creating the initial work, Johannes re-created it for a second time, making significant improvements to the design, but he was not ready to publicize his art piece just yet, and side-lined the project until now.
In 2019, Johannes decided to premiere his ‘Butterfly’ creation to the world in his UV live show “Rebloom”. However, during the lead up to the show he noticed there was room to make further enhancements to the illusion. Being the perfectionist that Johannes is he redid the ‘Butterfly’ three more times, once for a photo and twice for a video shoot. Apart from the innovation and brilliance of Johannes’s creation, the idea behind “Rebloom” was about unveiling the ‘Butterfly’ to the public for the first time followed by the final photo and video.
