distortion definition

Frequently artists use distortion or abstraction to convey feelings and a particular mood, because often things can be expressed more successfully in forms that are personalized, rather than through the use of realism.  Ironically, by taking a reality and changing it, artists are often able to create things that seem more real, due largely in part because of the expressiveness allowed in distortion or abstraction.  Distortion is a change of a reality's depiction, altering it in a way that one is able to still recognize the item itself, but notices it is changed in some manner.