About Me
Hi! I’m Nic Ray, a painter and tea enthusiast living and working in Rutland, England’s smallest county. I have a studio in a disused granary which I share with some friendly spiders. I’m a fine art graduate and sometime film-maker on an unending quest to develop a ‘show less, say more’ approach to painting. This takes me into some more experimental areas like tonalism. A single well-placed, descriptive, juicy brush stroke is the holy grail and completely inspiring. Some of my art heroes lived around the turn of the 19th and 20th Century – the likes of John Singer Sargent, William Nicholson and the Scottish colourist – FCB Cadell but I also admire modern masters such as the tonalist and abstract masters like Dennis Sheehan and Robert Motherwell.
I’m trained in drawing, print-making and painting. My chosen medium is oil paint. In a previous life I was an art technician. Where possible I prepare my own painting surfaces – fine linen on the right substrate for the job in hand.