Ray Swirsky is a Calgary based metis artist who began painting as a hobby in the fall of 2014. Now painting full time as a career, he is actively producing works of oil that range between
abstract realism to realism. Growing up in the small town of Kimberley, BC, Ray has always had
a connection to the great outdoors and this can be seen in his many landscape and bison
paintings. Some of these will be dramatic and refined and others less refined and almost
whimsical. Some will be completed with brush, some with palette knife, purposely being
changed up as means of understanding how paint behaves, always learning so more of this
understanding can be incorporated into future works.
You can be sure to see a wide variety of subject matter and styles in his portfolio, from
landscape, portrait, cityscapes and just about anything that catches his eye. He is always
pushing himself to better understand the basic fundamentals of light, value and intensity and
how oil paints are used to express that sense of atmosphere and depth into a painting.
Each work begins by first breaking the composition down to a half a dozen shapes, defining
each of these shapes as warm and cool areas, and then working these large shapes against
one another to create a sense of depth and atmosphere.
As a means of advancing his basic fundamental skills he is always challenging himself,
purposely incorporating elements in every painting that challenge those skills in the hopes that
these skills eventually become intuitive and consistent. Expect to see a variety of subject matter
to continue to appear in Ray’s work as he works hard to master those skills that are still difficult
to master.