A typical day for Casey Vormer consists of hours and hours of drawing.
He uses pencils to create photorealistic art of anything he finds interesting, which is mainly animals.
Recently, he took on his biggest endeavour yet — a portrait of the City of Montreal, from the view of Mount Royal, which took him a total of 830 hours to complete.
“I’m very detailed oriented,” said Vormer. “So I just focus on details. I don’t draw a building, I just draw a window, another window and another window — one window at a time. And then you have this building.”
Vormer says his attention to detail and ability to hyper-focus stems from his autism.
Growing up in the Netherlands, he says, he always felt different. Social interactions were hard and he was often bullied.
Vormer was invited to write about his experiences in a book published a earlier this year, entitled Connecting With The Autism Spectrum: How To Talk, How To Listen, And Why You Shouldn’t Call It High-Functioning.
After immigrating to Montreal close to 10 years ago for a fresh start, he started to draw and then eventually, began to sell and commission his work.
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In 2019, he met Tamarah Feder, who helped get his work into AutismCreates, a multimedia art exhibit that featured more than 36 Canadian autistic creatives.
“When I met him and worked with him and when I saw his work, I was just blown away,” she said. “There is something powerful and very profound in what he is able to capture in his art.”
Vormer, who goes by the artist name Remrov, uses social media platforms like TikTok to spread the word about his artwork.
With over 65,000 followers, his videos also help educate and raise awareness about his neurodiversity.
They always stress the fact that he is not just a pencil artist, but an autistic pencil artist.
“Autistic people can certainly thrive and be part of society,” he said. “And to get that message out I find is important.”
Vormer sells his artwork — both original, prints and commissioned work — on his website.
The drawing of downtown Montreal has already been reserved, but Vormer will soon be selling prints of it.
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