Life

Ray moved to Cornwall in 1974 to take up a teaching position at Falmouth School of Art. In the same year, Frank Auerbach selected his work for a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery — then one of Britain's foremost venues for contemporary art. The exhibition marked significant institutional recognition and situated Ray within the lineage of painters shaped by David Bomberg's teaching.

Moving away from painterly depictions of urban redevelopment in Reading, the industrial and post-industrial landscapes of Cornwall became Ray's principal subject. These landscapes — characterised by china clay workings, scrapyards, and abandoned mines and quarries — offered the structural complexity that had previously attracted him to the urban environments of London and Reading.

The distinctive light of Cornwall led to a broader and more luminous palette. Colour increasingly became a means of organising pictorial space rather than describing surface appearance. Transparent passages of paint began to work alongside heavier impasto, producing compositions in which colour, structure, and movement were closely integrated.

Teaching at Falmouth School of Art formed an important parallel to his studio practice. Throughout the decade he encouraged students to work from direct observation and to engage critically with landscape through drawing and painting. Although Cornwall provided the setting for more than three decades of his career, Ray remained distinct from the St Ives tradition more commonly associated with the region.

Landscape remained central to Ray's work throughout the 1980s. The industrial landscapes of west Cornwall — including china clay pits, scrapyards, quarries, and mines — continued to provide his principal subjects, approached through prolonged observation rather than as documentary records. These subjects were painted on a monumental scale. Scrap Yard VI (1988), for example, measures 153 x 275 cm, giving an ordinary scrapyard the physical presence traditionally associated with history painting.

Ray returned to the same locations across repeated sittings. Changes in weather, light, and season were expressed through increasingly vibrant colours and on larger scales. Reviewing a solo exhibition at Art Space Gallery in 1991, Mary Rose Beaumont observed: "The brilliant Cornish light beams down in his panoramic views, illuminating with startling clarity the whiteness of a claypit or the vivid colour of a flowering tree."

Alongside these works, Ray began a sustained series of figure paintings centred on dance and movement. These paintings extended concerns that had long informed his landscapes — in particular, the relationship between observation, movement, and the construction of pictorial space. In paintings such as Beach Fantasy (Yoga, Jenny Rath) (1985), Ray explored how the body could be represented as a sequence of actions rather than a static pose.

Ray continued to teach at Falmouth School of Art throughout the decade, encouraging students to develop their understanding of drawing and painting through direct engagement with landscape and the figure. His association with Art Space Gallery, established in 1989, began a long-term relationship that would support his work over the following decades.

Ray continued to live and work in Cornwall during the 1990s while exhibiting more widely across Britain and Ireland. A major retrospective at the Royal West of England Academy in 1996 brought together paintings from London, Reading, and Cornwall. Rather than emphasising distinct phases, the exhibition highlighted the continuity of his practice across different locations.

Landscape remained central to Ray's practice. Working from his purpose-built studio at Lanner, West Cornwall, he returned repeatedly to the industrial environment, producing paintings that evolved through sustained engagement with individual sites. The unconventional subject matter of china clay pits, quarries, and former mining landscapes offered the structural complexity and changing conditions through which Ray explored the relationships between geological form, human intervention, and light.

Ray retired from teaching during the decade after more than twenty-five years at Falmouth School of Art. Figure painting increasingly focused on movement, with large-scale compositions exploring the body through sustained observation rather than static poses. In Woman III (1994), ghostly successive arms register different stages of movement, extending ideas first explored in his landscape paintings.

Reviewing his work in 1995, William Packer described Ray as expressionist and praised the ambition of his large-scale treatment of the Cornish landscape. Ray Atkins and the Figure (1999) traced the development of his figure painting, with critic William Feaver observing how Ray "used the figure and the landscape as two takes on the same practice".

Rather than marking a new stylistic direction, the 2000s saw Ray deepen concerns that had shaped his work for many years. One of the most significant projects during the decade was Broken Ground (2001), a collaborative exhibition with the poet Peter Redgrove and composer Paul Hancock at the former Wheal Jane Mine near Truro. For Ray, the project extended his longstanding engagement with landscapes transformed by industry.

Throughout the decade, Ray continued to work directly within the industrial landscapes of west Cornwall. China clay pits, quarries, gardens, and woodland remained recurring subjects, approached through prolonged observation and repeat visits. His Rostowrack Pit series exemplifies this working method — painted on a monumental scale (152 x 274 cm), these works required physical engagement with both motif and canvas, reflecting Ray's commitment to what David Bomberg described as the "spirit in the mass".

Figure painting also remained an important aspect of his practice. Works such as Yoga Series – The Bridge and Right Foot Dancer (2001) place the figure within the same observational framework as the landscape, treating the body as another living form shaped by movement, light, and space. Stretches, bends, and balances contribute to the expressionist rhythm of the surrounding landscape.

Ray moved to the French Pyrenees in 2008 with his partner Hsiao-Hwa, beginning a new chapter in which a different landscape became the focus of his work. Leon Kossoff's 2003 tribute, describing Ray as a painter who "uses the outside world as a studio", acknowledged the distinctive commitment to direct observation that had characterised his work for more than four decades.

The 2010s marked a significant geographical shift in Ray's career. After decades spent working in Cornwall, Ray had settled in the foothills of the French Pyrenees in 2008, where a new landscape became the focus of his painting. Although the setting changed, his working method — rooted in sustained observation over extended periods — remained consistent.

The forests, mountain ridges, and valleys of the Pyrenees offered a markedly different environment from the industrial landscapes of Cornwall. Rather than seeking picturesque views, Ray responded to the underlying structure of the landscape, returning repeatedly to the same locations as paintings evolved over extended periods. The clearer light of southern France contributed to a more luminous palette in the increasingly expansive compositions.

When deteriorating eyesight began to affect his practice in 2012, Ray adapted his working methods to the new conditions: memory, accumulated visual experience, and peripheral colour perception assumed greater importance within the painting process. In Sweetcorn and Haricot Tarbais in the Potager (2014), vibrant yellow and green brushstrokes rise against darker foliage beneath a heavily worked sky of violets, blues, and whites.

The decade also saw a broader reassessment of Ray's career. A Long View (2011) traced the development of his work from Bromley and Reading through Cornwall to France. Ray Atkins: The Reading Years (2017) returned to the formative landscapes of the late 1960s to highlight his significance in documenting the changes that transformed the city.

More than seventy years after beginning his artistic training, Ray continues to paint the landscape surrounding his home in the French Pyrenees, maintaining the working methods that have shaped his practice since the 1950s. He explains: "I believe you paint about your own life, your own environment, and you take it as it comes. I think you can find a subject on your doorstep."

The landscapes of the Pyrenees remain his principal subject. Forests, gardens and mountain ridges are revisited over extended periods, allowing paintings to develop gradually through changing weather and repeated observation. Although deteriorating eyesight has altered the conditions under which he works, it has not altered the principles of his practice — with memory and accumulated visual experience assuming a greater role alongside direct perception.

Ray's commitment to the observational principles inherited from David Bomberg has remained constant. The 2024 retrospective at Belgrave Gallery brought together more than seven decades of painting to trace a continuous development from the urban landscapes of London and Reading to the industrial environments of Cornwall and the mountain landscapes of southern France. Viewed together, the works reveal a practice in pursuit of a sustained commitment to observation, pictorial structure, and the material possibilities of oil paint.