About Ray Strang

HERE IS SOMETHING honest and human about the canvases of Ray Strang that bespeaks not only an understanding of the people of our West but a great reverence for these people and the country in which they live. Of these people cowpunchers, ranchers, prospectors, pioneers and the sons of pioneers he writes: “It is my job to portray their lives and characters with understanding and enthusiasm. Then some day, when this country is no longer new, it won't matter whether my canvases are dated 1870 or 1940. They will simply be records of the Old West.”Ray Strang (his name rhymes with “rang”) lives on his ranch in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains, near a pleasant little place called Cortara, which is off the main road between Picacho and Tucson. He has sixty acres, a small ranch house with the desert and the mountains for friendly neighbors, and a sunset each evening that seems to be arranged especially by the copyright owner to enhance the evening view from his front porch.

He was born in Sandoval, Illinois, in September of 1893. He went to school in Centralia, Illinois, and in 1915 began his studies at Chicago Art Institute during the “Golden Age” of that venerable institution. He fought in the World War and was machine-gunned in the last Battle of the Argonne. After the war he returned tothe Art Institute, from which he graduated in 1920. He married a fellow student at the Institute, then went to New York and continued his studies at the Art Students League and the Society of Illustrators School. Establishing his residence in Connecticut, he spent the next seventeen years painting covers and doing illustrations for advertisements in practically every magazine and for every book publisher from Boston to Philadelphia. Our West became his West during a winter's vacation in Tucson, and here he is and here he expects to stay.Winter and summer, through the changing seasons, he works with his paintings which he hopes someday “will simply be records of the Old West.” And some day, too, when the old prospectors' trails have vanished and the ghost towns have faded into nothing and the people of our West have lost their personality so as to make them undistinguishable from folks either in New England of Nashville, Tennessee, his paintings will be records of our day and age and the decades before us. When a person searches, as Ray Strang has searched, he will find that off the beaten paths lives are lived here in Arizona inmany ways as they were lived in the '80's. Such is the charm of our country to this artist, as it is to so many other people.Herein are presented a few reproductions of Mr. Strang's paintings. They reveal his intense interest and understanding of the people who live along the byways of our land. If you venture back into the hills you'll meet Ray Strang's people at every turn of the road. He paints them as they are, simply and natural and plain, common everyday people with that great nobility of simple people living where life is not gentle but where courage makes it not unkind.

His paintings in a way are dramas in themselves expressing the humor, the patience, the loneliness and the courage of folks here in the West. We might smile at the wide-eyed alarm of the new "school marm" being brought in from the station or enjoy the robust vigor of a bunch of punchers coming to town on payday. Yet we'll pause and look into the golden sunset with the old prospector out in the hills and see there the fulfillment and the reward of the lonely years.

The country Mr. Strang paints is the fitting background of his people. His originals show a faithfulness to color rather than a servility to it. His colors do not scream out at you. He treats the scenery honestly and does not try to improve on Nature. His people are that way. He has tried, and is trying, to create "records of the Old West." We think he succeeds admirably... R. C.