raymondbyram.com

Raymond M. Byram was born and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Ray earned his Bachelors of Fine Arts from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1976, and co-founded the universities Fine Art Museum while working on his minor in Art History. Since graduation he has devoted himself to painting and printmaking.

For the last 50 years Ray has maintained a full time career as a free-lance artist working in oils, watercolor and printmaking. He has done extensive commission work for private and corporate collections, and has exhibited his paintings in one-man and group shows throughout the Eastern United States. Ray is an award winning artist who is known for his light filled mountain landscapes and his technical virtuosity.

Although Ray has worked across genres and mediums - from abstract and surreal to neo-realism, and from oils and watercolors to etchings, woodcuts, and serigraphy - landscapes in oil have remained Ray’s primary pursuit. His oils are almost exclusively created with small palette knives rather than brushes. Ray finds his inspiration throughout the eastern mountains, particularly in the North Georgia and North Carolina.

Ray’s deep love of nature, especially Appalachian forests, fused with a reverence for Impressionism, shapes a personal approach he calls “tight impressionism.” At first glance Ray’s paintings read as realistic, yet he deliberately adopts the theories of the Impressionists: color and light govern composition, paint application captures fleeting atmosphere, and scenes are distilled to their essential impressions while retaining careful structure and detail. The result is artwork that honors observed reality while expressing the ethereal moods of the natural world.