
Montreal pencil artist with autism on a mission to spread awareness about neurodiversity
Global News
A pencil artist with autism living in Montreal has made a living off of his beautifully-drawn artwork, and has made it his mission to spread awareness about neurodiversity.
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.
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.
Around that time, he met Tamarah Fender, who helped get his work into an art exhibit.