Ray Roberts
January 17, 2011 by admin
Filed under Art Exhibits
Landscape
Ray Roberts is one of California’s most respected, recognized and awarded Plein Air artists. He recently won the Gold Medal for “Best Painting” at the California Art Club and the Artists’ Choice Award, the highest accolade from fellow artists, at three major Southwest art events. He is best known for his seascapes, figurative work, and majestic views of California and the Southwest. Ray’s vibrant use of color, bold textures, and sensitivity to shifting patterns of light give life and movement to his paintings. They are to be experienced, not merely observed.
Inspired by such early California impressionists as Hanson Puthuff, William Wendt, and William Ritschel, Ray seeks to capture the luminous, golden light and the magnificent, vanishing landscapes of his native state. Like his other great hero, Maynard Dixon, Ray shares a reverence for the land and a marked spirituality in his work.
Ray grew up in an Orange County with orange groves, before the days of freeways and sprawling housing developments. It has given him an enduring affection for the untamed, undeveloped California of his youth. The Art Center is where Ray met his wife, impressionist painter Peggi Kroll. While dating, the two of them would go out nightclubbing, to sketch rather than dance! It has been a successful partnership ever since.
Ray and Peggi now live with their three children on a 20 acre ranch in Angel’s Camp, an old California gold rush town, surrounded by the oak-studded hills which he frequently paints.