PEOPLE walking in the town centre will soon be confronted with an optical illusion thanks to a renowned street artist.

Julian Beever has brought 3D illusions to the streets of 34 countries and will be revealing a specially commissioned work of art in Swindon this month.

Julian, who studied art at Leeds Polytechnic in his twenties, had no idea what he wanted to do with his degree after graduating, and joined some escapologists who were performing in York.

“I learned to juggle, ran the Punch and Judy show and busked,” he said. “Then one day I spotted some people doing pavement drawing outside York Minster, and it struck me as much less stressful work than the performing that I was doing.

“So I started doing pavement drawings for money in a hat.”

Julian’s first break came in Belgium, when he was drawing that national icon, the little boy having a pee, known as Mannekin Pis.

The street he was working on had previously had flowerbeds on it, but these were now covered in tarmac.

“The tarmac was inside a frame of slabs, and I realised that if I just coloured the slabs in it would look like a swimming pool, and I’d get half the job done in no time,”

he said.

“When I’d finished, I took a photo of it with me dipping my foot towards it, and was amazed at how three dimensional it looked.

“After that, I started to concentrate on illusions – like a well with someone falling into it.

“I moved to Belgium and started teaching art and English as a foreign language, so my living wasn’t so precarious, but I kept on making the 3D illusions.”

Despite the fact that he could see the commercial potential for his work, in the early 1990s Julian couldn’t interest the big brands in his type of art. But his second break came when his then girlfriend, who was studying the newfangled art of desktop publishing, asked if she could create a website for him as a project.

“I started getting commissions from commercial companies,” he said.

“I took a year off teaching, and have never gone back.”

Most of Julian’s gigs are outside the UK but he says he is particularly looking forward to producing the work that The Brunel shopping centre has commissioned.

“It’s a brand new drawing, and it’s going to take me four days to complete,” he says.

“It will have a very surrealists angle – it’s almost existentialist – and there’s a nice little joke in it as well. I hope people love it.”

Julian will be creating his Swindon illusion between August 25 and 29 at the Brunel Arcade, opposite That’s Entertainment.

For more details of Julian’s work, go to julianbeever.net and for details of The Brunel Shopping Centre visit thebrunel.co.uk.