Wallflowers by Ray Caesar
Artist Ray Caesar grew up in an old, rambling Victorian home in 1950's London. That period of his life still drives his imagination and the worlds and characters of his paintings. Caesar's beautiful imagery is all digital. He creates his figures and backdrops using 3-D modelling software, then adds textures and details using photographic s38les. In fact, Caesar collects s38les of textures in photographs: "I collect textures the way some people collect little silver spoons and I have a story about each texture in my collection such as the one about my father's hip operation scar or the picture I convinced my gastroenterologist to give me of the inside of my colon. My favorite textures to collect are skin textures, as I have a legitimate excuse to ask people to expose large areas of bare skin."
Sleeping by Day by Ray Caesar
Caesar says of his childhood home: "I can remember peeling back bits of wallpaper in that house to see the layers of several wallpapers below and once when we ripped out an old sideboard we found newspapers stuffed in a gap in the wall from the 1890s. The past has been a part of the fabric of my life since childhood and it's a place I often love to escape into."
I feel like I'm stepping into another time and place when looking at Caesar's work. In fact, for me, it's like discovering a secret portal into the gothic, slightly twisted, slightly naughty imagination of a Victorian boy locked in his room by a cruel stepmother. Hardly Caesar's bio, but it's one of the multiple stories my brains spins out of his images.
Santa Maria by Ray Caesar
For an informative interview with Caesar, visit San Diego based-artist and book designer Mark Murphy's blog . Mark has just published a collection of Caesar's work in book form and it looks amazing. Mark's books are definitely collectible items and many of the leading artists in the pop surrealism genre look to him for publication of their work. You can check out Murphy's other books (great x-mas gifts!) here .
Also, for a smile and some insight into Caesar's imagination, check out his bio , in which he recounts his childhood as a dog.
Chris
November 25, 2008 at 09:15 PM
That wierd and fleshy, I probably shouldn't be in this room feeling...Nice, reminds me of Lucien Freud's stuff with more cute in it.
