Double Take: Jason de Graaf

These paintings look like they’re created with a camera, not acrylic paint.When looking at Canadian artist Jason de Graaf’s artwork, one immediately sees an array of color, spectacular and convincing realism, and three dimensional figures that just reach out to you and beg to be touched. His use of focus and reflected light are what makes his work so special and almost fake looking.

However, these “hyperrealistic” paintings that appear to be computer generated, are painstakingly crafted with acrylic paint onto a canvas surface.

 The term “mystical realism” has been coined to describe his one-of-a-kind pieces. It’s the perfect way to describe them. One almost always does a double take when looking at his work. It is almost impossible at times to peel away your eyes from his handiwork, because the fact that it looks like an ordinary photograph that took a few minutes to shoot, is in reality a painting that took hours to create. That’s quite hard to wrap your head around, isn’t it?  Jason de Graff spends endless hours and days in isolation to complete his intricate art. A camera is indeed part of the process, but not the final result. He first takes a picture of his still like compositions before drawing them onto a canvas. He colors them by his own interpretations with acrylic paint. His influences include M.C. Escher to Johannes Vermeer, but says watching a local illustrator demonstrate paintings with acrylics helped him develop his unique style.  De Graaf told Poets & Artists magazine that his paintings are about creating the “illusion of verisimilitude,” filtered through his own vision of the world. “Though I use photographs as thee image source, my goal is not to reproduce of document faithfully what I see, but to create an illusion of depth and sense of presence not found in photographs.” Jason de Graaf is represented by the Plus One Gallery in London and by Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal.Source: Damien Gayle of MailOnline | Image Source: The Paintings of Jason De Graaf