Art11

Peter G. Ray’s art is rooted in European surrealism, biomorphism, automatism, and especially the painting of Salvador Dali.  But he has also registered Post World War II, North American abstraction and especially the work of Jackson Pollock. Like Pollock, Peter G. Ray creates a dynamic and fluid field of forms arrived at by ideation and improvisation.  Of course, the handling of the material in Peter G. Ray’s pictures differs radically from Pollock’s and Pollock-type painting in that Peter G. Ray’s is a world of depicted forms in space like traditional painting.

Next to a Pollock, a Peter G. Ray is far more illusionistic and complex. Pollock and his followers opened the picture out, spreading it across the wall. The result is simpler, more decorative than Peter G. Ray’s which addresses us more personally and draws us in more than it pushes us back.  There is modeling of forms, dramatic foreshortening, sometimes deep space and theatrical lighting but no consistent perspective or light source.  It is all free form.

Peter G. Ray always gives us a snapshot of some fantastic, biological event.  There are forms that suggest jellyfish, tendrils, bubbles, cords, buds and much else. The visceral and the sexual are everywhere evoked as is the subatomic, aquatic, cosmic and futuristic.  In the end though, Peter G. Ray’s art, is a celebration of human creativity and genius.

- Kenwoth W. Moffett, 2007

Peter lives and works in both Montreal and New York City.

www.peterg-ray.com

www.artsync.ca/opening-peter-g-ray/