After a long successful career as an illustrator Ray Evans has returned to painting as his first love. Following a very successful show in Cardiff in 1998 he was invited by Kyffin Williams to apply for a membership of the Royal Cambrian Academy and was duly elected thus establishing himself as a truly Celtic painter.
During the last two years he has been further inspired by visits to the Republic of Ireland and this combines with a return to acrylics, as his media thirty years ago when he painted near abstracts shown in an exhibition at Aberystwyth University. So he has come the full circle.
Now although a degree of abstraction is left he is more excited by the moods and brooding atmosphere of subjects as the peat cutters of Donegal which he saw on a visit in 1998. Farmers, fishermen and workers are the subjects he likes most although the mysterious atmosphere of lake, shore and mountain now catch his imagination. For a time years ago he found mountains difficult to paint and difficult to avoid the obvious sentimentality of that type of subject.
His illustration work was mainly of a high detailed and architectural nature in drawing, painting and sketching. Now he finds that the freedom of painting in acrylics has released him from the restrictions and given his paintings a new and reinvigorated life.
He has written seven books and is an ardent user of sketch books. He has lectured in several American Universities on the skills of freehand sketching and drawing to architectural departments.
He is a council member of the Royal Institute of painters in watercolours and a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy. He has now virtually given up his illustration work and devotes his time and skill to painting.
