Canadian Jason de Graaf is one of those artists that creates works that will boggle your mind. At first glance you think you’re just looking at fun photos of childhood toys like action figures, comic books and marbles. These are actually acrylic paintings that are so precisely detailed, with life-like colors, perfect shadows and incredible reflections, that one’s left scratching their head in total disbelief.
Over three years ago we first came across de Graaf’s works and included some of them in our list of 21 most mind-blowing hyperreal paintings. It’s great to see that he’s continued to make magnificent work that pushes creative boundaries but in a whimsical, relatable and even personal way.
As he states, “My paintings are about staging an alternate reality, an illusion of verisimilitude on the painted surface. I try to use objects as a vehicle to express myself, tell a story or least hint at something beyond what is actually painted. Therefore I try to choose objects that have meaning to me or are artifacts from my life.”
