Metamorphosis by Steve Wilding is a portrait about becoming — not just in form, but in perception. A woman’s face sits calm and centred while her hair expands outward and transforms into butterflies, as if identity is lifting off the head and taking flight. It’s a simple, bold silhouette at first glance, but the longer you look, the more the image feels like it’s in motion: the crown isn’t fixed hair at all, it’s change captured mid-release.

The artwork begins as a high-contrast black-and-white graphic with subtle green and magenta offsets embedded along edges and contours. These aren’t uniform “glitch” lines; the offsets vary across the face, hair, and butterflies, creating a controlled imbalance — like the image is slightly out of phase with itself. That unevenness is intentional. It’s the mechanism that makes the second reality possible.

When viewed correctly through a prism lens, the piece undergoes a new transformation: the hair and butterflies resolve into yellow and blue, while the face shifts toward cyan and red, as shown below. The same coulours produce a different palette, as if the artwork is being re-translated by the prism as the light passes through. What looked like minimal duo-chrome becomes a split spectrum — not a full rainbow, but a precise re-mapping of colour where the subject and the metamorphosis separate into distinct chromatic identities.

That duality is the heart of Metamorphosis: one image, two readings. In one state, it’s a stark portrait with a symbolic crown of butterflies — a visual shorthand for transformation, freedom, and thoughts taking flight. In the other, it becomes an experiment in perception: how a new lens can reveal hidden structure, how colour can be present without being obvious, and how the “truth” of an image can depend on what you bring to it.

Metamorphosis is digital art designed for discovery — a piece that rewards attention, shifts with context, and turns light itself into part of the subject.

Keywords: Digital Art, Prism Art, Steve Wilding, Metamorphosis, Colour Shift Art, RGB Offset, Optical Illusion, Light Interference, Contemporary Portrait, Butterfly Art