Seascape by Ray Roberts, oil painting.

Ray Roberts is best known for his seascapes, figurative work, and majestic views of California and the Southwest, and is one of California's most respected plein air artists. He seeks to find rhythm, beauty, and ambiguity in painting while searching for a sense of time and place. The great outdoors is Ray's studio. A bit of an adventurer, he's been known to backpack for several days into the wilderness, set up his easel on a cliff edge, or in the surf, for just the right setting.

Inspired by such early California Impressionists as Hanson Puthuff, William Wendt, and William Ritschel, Roberts believes in the importance of artistic legacy and, like his other great hero Maynard Dixon, shares a reverence for the land and a marked spirituality in his work.

Roberts attended the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, where he studied with John Asaro, Dan McCaw, Len Chmiel, Ned Jacob, and Mark Daily, among other great artists. He first pursued a career as an illustrator, establishing a studio in Los Angeles and then Scottsdale, Arizona. He got up the courage to switch to fine art in 1992 and has never looked back. He is a signature member of the Plein-Air Painters of America, the California Art Club, and the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association and has participated in numerous invitational exhibitions and group shows.

Awards and honors have included Best of Show in the Irvine Heritage Show; the Artists' Choice Award at the Laguna Plein Air Invitational; and the Gold Medal award for Best Painting at the California Art Club's 94th Annual Gold Medal Juried Exhibition, among others. Roberts lives with his wife, artist Peggi Kroll-Roberts, in northern California and is represented by James J. Rieser Fine Art, in Carmel, California; Knowlton Fine Art, in Lodi, California; Medicine Man Galleries, in Tucson, Arizona; and Michael Hollis Fine Art, in South Pasadena, California. For more information, visit his webpage.

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