Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, March 6, 2021: Ray Caesar, an English-born Canadian digital surreal artist

Saturday, March 6, 2021

Artist of the Day, March 6, 2021: Ray Caesar, an English-born Canadian digital surreal artist

Ray Caesar (1973) is an English-born Canadian digital surreal artist

Ray spent 17 years working in the Art & Photography Department of the Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto, in their art therapy program. Inspired by surrealists such as Frida Kahlo and Salvador Dalí, Caesar's experiences at the Children Hospital deeply influenced his artwork. Caesar said: "Working in a photography department in a Children's hospital is the act of chronicling everything from child abuse, re-constructive surgery, to the heroic children that deal with the hardship and challenges that life has to offer. I spent many years creating medical and research documentation, medical and technical drawings, images of huge equipment surrounding tiny premature infants and visual tools for brain-damaged children".

From 1998 to 2001 he worked as a senior animator in GVFX, Toronto, where he mastered his skills in using 3D modelling software.

Ray Caesar's work is digitally created using 3D modelling software called Maya, mastered while working in digital animation for television and film industries from 1998-2001. His portraits involve contrasting elements of childlike innocence, grotesque physical deformities, and sexual innuendos. In his creations he merges elements of decorative styles and architectural ages, mixing Art Decò, Victorian style and visual codes from the early 1900s.

According to an interview with ``Empty Lighthouse Caesar begins his process with "automatic drawing which is basically just letting your hand do first what your mind hasn't thought about." His work often contains elements which are invisible in the final render such as "old letters and photographs in lockets [that are tucked] away into drawers that are closed." According to Caesar, "I know they are there... and I love that sometimes I forget they are there." Caesar likens the virtual environment to "a dissociative fugue or very deep daydream... you can get lost in there very easily."

In 1999, Caesar received a Primetime Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for his work on Total Recall 2070, a Gemini Nomination for Special Effects and a Monitor Award for Special Effects in a series.

Caesar's work has become popular amongst celebrities and fashion icons, such as Madonna, who collects his works and has claimed Ray Caesar is one of her favourite artists

Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy curated issue #8 of A Magazine, in which he featured artwork by Ray Caesar as a source of creative inspiration

Ray Caesar is frequently featured in Contemporary Art magazine Hi Fructose

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