Ode to the Navy, canvas print

Toronto-based artist Ray Ceasar creates eerie and surreal narrative images using digital modeling and texturing techniques. The artist’s works combine aesthetics, fashions, and motifs from a variety of bygone eras, resulting in anachronistic works that seem oddly timeless.

Solar Calm, single piece on wood panel

Ceasar’s figures have a very distinct look – their slightly rounded faces, pale skin and doll-like features give them an almost ghostly appearance in many of the artist’s scenarios. These polished, not-quite-realistic figures remind me of paintings by Megan Majewski or Kristin Freznel. Occasionally, Ceasar veers into the territory of classic novel horror, adding tentacles and other unnatural appendages to his figures.

I really appreciate the artist’s attention to detail when it comes to his overall compositions, as well. Each image may focus on a central figure, but that figure is usually surrounded by, and interacting with, a variety of objects and landscape elements. In all their fine detail and deliberate posing, these artworks invite close-up, extended viewings.

Sailor Boy, single piece on wood panel