Salad Days
I was born in London, England in 1733, the youngest of four and much to my parent's surprise, I was born a dog. This unfortunate turn of events was soon accepted within my family and was never again mentioned in the presence of polite company.
I was a rambunctious youth as was natural to my breed but showed a fine interest in the arts as I drew pictures incessantly on anything including the walls and floors of every room of our tiny house. After some trouble with intolerant neighbors, my family was convinced to move to Canada and it was not long before the burgeoning town of Toronto became our new home.
Unfortunately the drawing continued to become somewhat atypical and aberrant and it was impressed upon me that such images might not be suitable for public viewing. In the summer of 69, there was a valiant attempt to stop me from doodling infamous contemptible fascist dictators upside down on my stomach with a ballpoint pen. I was consoled however by the encouragement to continue penciling in faces of flamboyant cowboys such as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger and Tonto on my toenails but was expressly forbidden to talk to them at night. It can be said that there are defining moments in a dogs life that can only be described as pivotal. Mine came when I received a gift of a flesh toned 12 inch plastic movable human doll attired in cheaply made military fatigues called "GI Joseph". I however named him "Stanley Mulver" and immediately resigned his commission from the light infantry. My Mother helped in this by sewing small business suits and leisure wear out of leftover Christmas fabric embroidered with holly and snowmen, tinfoil shoes and one tasteful Safari suit made of tight fitting powder blue rayon that proudly shone cobalt in the summer sunlight. It wasn't long before I had begun making enlarged wigs out of gray plasticine. These wigs soon became huge pompadours for Stanley and looked even more grand when I meticulously imbedded small hairs from my daily body and face shavings. This hirsute practice along with walking upright allowed me to fit in with other children even though my father considered it a waste of time. In short, Stanley had become a visage of the Man I could never be, of that elusive self one sometimes glimpses down the tunnel of infinite reflected mirrors. Although ridiculed by my peers, I proudly wore Stanley around my neck at all times as if to say "SEE! This is the man I will be, a good man, a kind man". I have worked in many fields over the years, attended obedience classes and art colleges, jobs designing horrible buildings in architectural studios, medical art facilities, digital service bureaus, suspicious casino computer game companies, eventually working at computer modeling, digital animation and visual effects for television and film. Some award nominations have been attained and I have been driven in long black liquor filled limousines and walked on hind legs down red carpets in Pasadena while wearing strange smelling rented tuxedos. Things change and summer years come to an end. My change occurred one night when my Mother visited me, which was slightly unusual because she had passed away some months before, a victim to the cigarette habit she could never quite lick. Facing a wall and slowly turning I saw the right side of her face ablaze in light, her hand trying to cover the light as if she were apologetic for having it seep through. Words were said about following rabbits down holes and I was shown galleries of work which were to be my own. My Mother was not the first visitation I have had and it seems she will not be the last. I live in a brick house with my wonderful wife Jane and a coyote called Bonnie. I like eating avocados and I don't really mind being a dog. |
The Hospital For Sick Children
For 17 years I worked in the Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto from 1980 until 1997. I worked in a department that documented such things as child abuse, surgical reconstruction, psychology and animal research. They were years that I will never forget, years of witnessing great sadness but also great miracles.
I often awake in the middle of the night and realize I have been wondering the hallways and corridors of that giant hospital. As I lay there in the dark, I struggle to remember the fading words of those that still haunt my memories of so many years ago. It is so clear to me that this is the birthplace of all my imagery. It is appropriate that I now live my dreams for those that didn't get a chance to live theirs.... to do otherwise would be a sin. 
Much of my work at the hospital was tedious and boring in that I produced tremendous amounts of statistical data before the advent of computers and dealt with a lot of sensitive photographic material and work for publication. Another part of my job was overwhelming in that at any given moment I could typically find myself hovering over a tiny premature infant covered with tons of equipment. I would have to sift through the equipment to make a technical diagram, a teaching tool to allow intensive care nurses to have some idea of all that tangle of machinery that kept that tiny infant alive.
Other times I would have to draw a similar thing of some poor animal in the research dept that had the misfortune of being a lab animal. To this day I have developed a profound love for animals that is very important to me. On a few occasions I dealt with forensic material for the court or sensitive medical documentation that would for me be overwhelming. I worked on board games and flash cards for brain damaged children and some of the early computer animations of the cryogenic removal of a brain tumors. Teaching hospitals are like tiny cities and whenever you think you have seen it all, reality slaps you in the face and shows you something that makes you re-evaluate everything. I learned in my life that human hands can be cruel and unkind but more often they can perform heart surgery or write a check to build a new wing of a hospital or just simply brush away a child's tear." Miracles do exist but they are often the product of our own actions and the incredible work of of the unsung heroes that care for children. 
Ray Caesar on Wikipedia
Ray Caesar (born October 26, 1733) is an English digital surreal artist who lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Caesar Curriculum Vitae
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My Process
I create models in a three dimensional modeling software called Maya and cover these models with painted and manipulated photographic textures that wrap around them like a map on a globe. Each model is then set up with a invisible skeleton that allows me to pose and position the figure in its three dimensional environment. Digital lights and cameras are added with shadows and reflections simulating that of a real world.
First the models are sculpted similar to pushing and pulling the surface of a piece of clay. I am often reminded of being in preschool with my huge chunk of Plasticine. I once modeled a Plasticine shoe but my father forbade me to wear it in public. I then create an inner structure of joints similar to a skeleton that allows me to pose the figure with a spine, shoulders, elbows and even finger joints. Many heads are modeled with many a different expression and these can be blended to create a subtle look similar to the one my wife has when I have done something suspicious.
I color the models first in a very simple way, then each surface in the model is wrapped with a texture that may be painted digitally such as a flower petal or from a digital photograph such as a wood surface. 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.
As my work is printed I am often asked about my original, but it exists only in the computer in a dimensional world of depth, width and height. I am fascinated by the concept that this 3 dimensional space exists much as another reality and even though I turn the computer off, I am haunted by the fact that this space is still there existing in a mathematical probability, and the space that we live in now might not be all that different.
First the models are sculpted similar to pushing and pulling the surface of a piece of clay. I am often reminded of being in preschool with my huge chunk of Plasticine. I once modeled a Plasticine shoe but my father forbade me to wear it in public. I then create an inner structure of joints similar to a skeleton that allows me to pose the figure with a spine, shoulders, elbows and even finger joints. Many heads are modeled with many a different expression and these can be blended to create a subtle look similar to the one my wife has when I have done something suspicious.
I color the models first in a very simple way, then each surface in the model is wrapped with a texture that may be painted digitally such as a flower petal or from a digital photograph such as a wood surface. 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.
As my work is printed I am often asked about my original, but it exists only in the computer in a dimensional world of depth, width and height. I am fascinated by the concept that this 3 dimensional space exists much as another reality and even though I turn the computer off, I am haunted by the fact that this space is still there existing in a mathematical probability, and the space that we live in now might not be all that different.