Ray Caesar

Ray Caesar is celebrated in the fine art world as the grandfather of digital art, a pioneer who has reshaped perceptions of entirely digital creations. His distinctive works draw inspiration from a range of sources, merging the past and present into surreal visual narratives.

Caesar’s art references the Dutch and Flemish masters like Vermeer and Jan van Eyck, the elegance of 18th-century painter Thomas Gainsborough, and the dreamlike decadence of French Rococo artists Watteau and Boucher. His love for Japanese culture is deeply personal, influenced by his Japanese wife Jane and her family, who introduced him to the works of renowned authors Yukio Mishima and Jun’ichiro Tanizaki.

Tanizaki’s themes, including the femme fatale, family dynamics, and the samurai ethic of balancing beauty, discipline, and honor, resonate strongly in Caesar’s work. This blend of Western art history and Japanese tradition creates a unique tension in his pieces—simultaneously timeless and modern.

Ray Caesar’s artworks are deeply autobiographical, capturing his life’s memories and moments. These visual diaries provoke both fascination and discomfort, leaving viewers yearning for more. For Caesar, creating art is akin to journaling—each piece provides a soothing release and a shared sense of inner calm.

As a trailblazer, Caesar has paved the way for the acceptance of digital art as fine art, demonstrating that entirely digital creations demand the same time, effort, and skill as traditional mediums. His meticulously crafted works, which take countless hours to complete, have earned international acclaim.

Caesar’s work has been exhibited extensively in solo shows across Europe, North America, and Asia, earning a place in the collections of esteemed institutions like the Bristol Museum. His art is also cherished by prominent collectors such as Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy, the Hearst Family (owners of Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine and ESPN), and others.

In addition to exhibitions, Caesar has been featured in major publications, including The Times Magazine, Huffington Post, Vogue Italy, Vogue Japan, Hi-Fructose, and Juxtapoz, further cementing his influence in the contemporary art world.

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George Jae Hyun Cho

Originally from Seoul, Korea, George Jae-Hyun Cho earned his BFA in Ceramics from NSCAD University and a Diploma in Ceramics from Sheridan College. He was awarded the NSCAD-Lunenburg Community Studio Residency position in 2010 and was accepted into Harbourfront Centre’s Artist-in-Residence. Upon completing the contract with Harbourfront, he will be pursuing an MFA in Ceramics at West Virginia University beginning this September in Jingdezhen, China.

The displacement of familiarity brings forth transformations out of necessity, insecurity, or sentimentality. While universal experiences can take a unique personal manifestation, Cho was marked by adopting a new culture, where he searches for  self-identity directed by the medium of ceramics.

Through cultural understanding and adaptation, Cho seeks to find harmony within his personal and artistic struggles to transcend tradition but to also rediscover the spirit of tradition. Challenging the notion of utility and the virtue of classical beauty, the presence and absence of the metaphysical qualities of pottery are explored through deconstruction of ideas and forms. Currently, Cho’s work brings simple utilitarian objects to mimic iconic pottery forms and explore the notion of the ordinary into something unique and virtuous. With this new series of work, Cho continue to investigate the intersection between art and craft, everyday objects and the spectacle.

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Harold Feist

Harold Feist was born in Texas and studied painting and Art History at the University of Illinois and went on to become a Hoffberger Fellow at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he had hopes of apprenticing under the abstract painter Clyfford Still. However, after a year, a chance trip to Calgary with a friend landed him a teaching position at the Alberta College of Art, and with Still having become increasingly isolated in the latter part of his career, Feist immediately accepted. It was 1968, and by that time the Canadian prairies had already undergone a flourishing in abstract painting. Two decades earlier, Regina, Saskatoon, and Edmonton had become the site of workshops, galleries, and university courses taught by well-known American abstract painters who garnered the praise of New York art critic Clement Greenberg. Unintentionally, Feist came to share a geography with these painters and spent the length of his career in Canada with numerous solo and group exhibitions across North America. He had his first solo exhibition at the Glenbow Museum in 1970 and was included in an important group exhibition at The Edmonton Art Gallery entitled Prairie ’74, which focussed on an emerging set of promising abstract painters in western Canada.

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Gottfried Helnwein

Gottfried Helnwein who’s concerned primarily with psychological and sociological anxiety, historical issues and political topics.  As a result of this, his work is often considered provocative and controversial.  Reoccurring focuses include the Child unlike portrayed in usual innocent carefree manners are vividly depicted as physically and emotionally harmed.  As well as self-portraits and the Holocaust.  Also reoccurring are cartoons twisted with a monstrous vision.  Other works of Helnwein includes portraits of the Rolling Stone, John F Kennedy for Time magazine, Andy Warhol, Muhammed Ali and works of art in the ‘History’ album of Michael Jackson.

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Grace Eunshin Kim

Grace Eunshin Kim has always been drawn to the divine images of late 13th to late 15th century European Renaissance artists.  These include artists: Giotto, Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca.  Kim is attracted to human awkwardness in these works.  Like these paintings, her images are melancholy, with characters in flux within an imagined time and place.  Through composition and depiction of various characters Kim defines tension and conflict between who we are and what we aspire to be.  In her own unique visual vocabulary the figures are static, often exist in solemn contemplation – a kind of inner conflict and the anxiety of being ill defined.

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Jeffrey Chong Wang

Jeffrey Wang’s artwork is a deeply personal exploration of emotions, memories, and his interpretation of life. Born and raised in China before moving to Canada in 1999, Wang’s cultural duality profoundly influences his work. He uses portraits of family members and evocative landscapes inspired by locations in China to create dramatic, narrative-driven pieces.

Wang’s figures are, in many ways, self-portraits, reflecting his cultural heritage, personal experiences, and a sense of imbalance between his inner emotions and the external world. His art blends classical Western oil painting techniques with contemporary Eastern themes, using exaggerated forms to craft vivid, theatrical compositions.

An internationally acclaimed artist, Wang’s work has been exhibited in Toronto, Montreal, Amsterdam, Rome, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and beyond. His pieces continue to captivate global audiences, bridging cultural traditions and modern storytelling.

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Selena Wong

Like the urban environment of her place of birth in Hong Kong, Selena’s work reflects the petite surroundings, the places tucked away, forgotten, and removed from reality. Interested in superstition, folklore and the fantastical, Selena’s meticulously detailed translations of her daydreams and nightmares are both playful and disturbing. She currently works and lives in Toronto with her Netherland dwarf rabbit.
Like the urban environment of her place of birth in Hong Kong,

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Debra Tate Sears

Sears’ works, like watercolour, are fast drying and are unlike any other medium in that egg tempera is composed of eggs and pigments which is one of the oldest forms of painting.  This requires an artist to mix and create their paint using fine artist’s pigments ground with water into a paste to which an egg yolk and water is added. It is often overlooked by contemporary painters because of the complicated application of paint and the amount of preparation involved.  In the words of Debra Tate Sears:
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This is exactly why I was attracted to the medium.  It is a return to something that is very fundamental, and very satisfying – an organic relationship between artist and raw materials that hasn’t altered significantly in a millennium.
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The paint created is translucent, and is applied in thin repetitious layers of cool and warm, and transparent and opaque. Glazing and scumbling are used to reveal layers of the underlying colour, hence the luminous quality of the painted surface.  The support for the painting must be rigid, and traditionally, wood panels have been used.  A “true gesso” made with marble dust and/or chalk, water and animal glue serves as the ground to paint on.

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