Ray Strang

Ray Strang, Painter

Ray Strang was born on an Illinois farm and reared among horses. In his early life he knew little else until he left home to become an artist. What wonder, then, that he paints them so well, and that they appear on so many of his canvases!

Strang's father broke, or "gentled", horses for others who lacked either the time or the knack for the task, and it was a pretty steady job for the whole family. Those were the days when carloads of unbroken Western broncs were shipped in large numbers into the Middle West for sale at auction at from $20 to $35 per head to both townfolk and farmers. They were the "tin-lizzies" of the horse and buggy days, and everybody had at least one in his barn or pasture.

"The Old Man," says Ray, "had a talent or perhaps it was a sort of mania for trading. As the saying went, he would trade for anything that wore a halter. Consequently it was a weird conglomeration of horseflesh that passed through our barns. My father got a terrific kick out of matching wits with the professional horse-traders, both native and gypsy, who traveled through the country. They were hard bargainers and practiced all the shady tricks of the trade, but they knew horses. So did Father. But, of course, as time went on, we got our share of bad ones even to some of the wind-broken, with sponges up their nostrils to quiet their breathing, and occasionally a fat and sleek looking animal with arsenic bloat instead of solid tissue. All in all, it was a pretty thorough education, appreciated the more, perhaps, now that I'm doing my horse grooming in oils instead of with brush and curry comb."

So Ray Strang likes to paint horses. Knowing them so well, he thinks he does them better, but, therein, a glance at the accompanying color reproductions of some of his other works, will reveal justifiable room for argument.

Strang came to Arizona as a permanent resident in 1937, and built a house on a 60-acre desert tract atop a hill near Tucson, with a wide valley sweep and rugged mountains as friendly neighbors, and brilliant sunsets nearly every evening which would challenge the soul of any artist. There he resides with his wife and only child a boy now somewhere in the service on the other side of the Pacific and masterfully applies to canvas a great many subjects in addition to horses. Ray Strang, like so many other noted masters of the brush and palette, fascinated by the color and variety of desert and mountain landscapes, came here to live, and went Western.

It was difficult at first, he says, to regard events of 1860 and 1870 as history. He had come to Arizona from the New England states where the sturdy farmhouse in which he had been living antedated even some of our crumbling old Missions. He couldn't find the "Old West" for which he was looking.

Then it came to him suddenly and forcefully that the Old West is still living. The young men in Levi's, big hats and high-heeled boots whom he saw on the streets actually were cowboys, men of the range lands, little different today than their fathers and grandfathers of fifty or seventy-five years previously. He visited a working ranch, found that a cowhand still makes his living on a horse, spends long and tedious days in the saddle, sleeps on bedrolls, gathers around chuck-wagons or cooks his own meals on a campfire. He began to get the feel of the West and put it faithfully on canvas.

"At long last," he admits, "I am able to re-people the dim desert trails and the ghost towns with real men and women." He sees them because they are still there to be seen in modern dress but prototype. If you venture out on the desert or into the hills you, too, will find them at every turn of the road and at every ranch house and windmill. Strang paints them as they are, simply and naturally, the plain, common everyday folk of great nobility, kind and generous and thoughtful of others, even though their manner of life is none too easy or gentle.

"These are my subjects," he says, "the pioneers and builders of the coming era. It is my job to portray their lives and characters with truth and understanding. That is a large order, I know, and as I got here late and work so slowly I'm afraid I'm not apt to come near to filling it." But therein, again, even a glimpse of his canvases will reveal more room for argument.

Because Ray Strang, not just recently but years ago, in many of his oils and pen and ink drawings has faithfully caught the spirit of the West-the West not only of today, but yesterday. And he himself says, by way of admission: "Some day, when the country is no longer new, it won't matter whether my canvases are dated 1870 or 1945-they will simply be Old West records."

Strang will tell you that in all of his life he never wanted to be anything but an artist. Probably the brightest spot of his childhood, he says, was the little desk he got on his sixth Christmas. It was placed in front of his bedroom window, and he spent nearly the whole day up there alone drawing pictures of the barns across the road. When the branches of intervening trees obstructed his view, he would run down stairs and out onto the porch to take a

Ray Strang, Painter

Continued From Page Eighteen look, then race back to the desk to get it down before he forgot it didn't occur to him to take along a pad and a pencil. Throughout his life as an artist, that method has persisted, and in all of his works it has been an effective influence for power and individuality.

Strang was born in Sandoval, Illinois, in 1893, the eldest of a family of ten children. At the age of 17, he left home and worked his way to Chicago and night classes at the Art Institute, later becoming a full time student. In 1915 he hopped freights to San Francisco and the World's Fair, then served from 1917 to 1919 in World War I, being wounded by machine gun fire in the Second Battle of the Argonne. He returned to be graduated from the Art Institute, be married and move to New York, all in 1920; had two more years of schooling at the Art Students League and the Society of Illustrators School, then launched out on his own to earn a living. He moved to Connecticut, bought a 190 year old farm house and settled down as an illustrator, with as much time out as possible for painting. His removal to Arizona to reside came following a visit to the Southwest in the early 1930's.

Ray Strang, as demonstrated in his first experience at his new desk on his sixth Christmas, is an impressionist in the literal sense of the word, for to this day he paints all his canvases in his studio, largely from memory. He does make sketches-hundreds of them-from hastily pencilled notes that are nearly as much written description as drawing. Even during the progress of a painting he often stops to make "detail" studies, but uses none of them actually to paint from.

"The 'idea' for a picture," he says, "is always completely worked out in my mind first, with only a very sketchy pencil layout to fix the main proportions and tone masses of the composition. Then I start right in with a brush on the canvas, painting rather than drawing, from the very beginning. I like to work all over the picture all of the time, so that in the end -from one to three weeks later it's done, all at once completely finished.

"This seems the best way for me to work-but methods are unimportant. The main thing I am trying to get is the 'atmosphere' or 'feel' of this country and the character and spirit of its people."

How exceedingly well he has done in that respect is demonstrated by the preceding color reproductions of a portfolio of some of his paintings.

Wild Horse Ranch This setting is on Wild Horse Ranch near the Strang home in the Tucson Mountains, with Safford Peak in the background-but, says Ray, it is typical, and might just as well have been on any other ranch near round-up time when new hands and horses are getting their try-outs.

Market Report-This is one of the paintings in what Strang calls his "Model T" series. "I'm sure", he says, "the 'tin-lizzie' era will soon be as romantic as the covered wagon days of our ancestors. These versatile little iron horses pioneered the machine age throughout rural America. They have served their purpose and are fast fading out of the picture, but they will live forever in history as an important milestone in a golden age of progress."

Poppies and Mommies Every spring in Avra Valley, nature rolls out a fifteen-mile wide carpet of these little yellow poppies. It is the year's most colorful spectacle in the desert country of Southern Arizona. People come from miles around to see it. Rattlesnake Pass on the old Silverbell road affords the visitor a grandstand view of the display.

Deer at the Waterhole-This picture is set in the Border country near Arivaca, and the deer is the beautiful little Sonora Fantail. "The first time I saw any of these animals," says Strang, "was just at dusk on a lonely road in the Huachuca Mountains. Two of them popped out of the barely waist-high grass alongside the road and flashed across not more than a hundred feet ahead of us. In the dim light they reminded us of over-sized jack rabbits."

Lost and Found A little critter like this is hard to find even in as open country as the artist has shown here, and the job of bringing him in is even more exasperating. They seem to have no sense at all except of perversity. Fortunately, a cow seldom lets her calf get lost, but the occasional orphan or "dogie" soon learns to take care of himself in the range lands.

Silver Creek-The sandy beds of dry washes have always been natural highways in the foothills country. It is not too easy going, but better than the rocks, brush and cactus on the slopes.

Summer Storm Passes In the Southwestern winter it just clouds up and rains once in awhile; but the summer "rainy season" is something very different. "Though short and often violent," explains Strang, "each storm is different, and each is sheer drama-almost indescribable and probably unpaintable, but so exciting that each year I have to try to do at least one."

Desert Perennials "I like to paint the Papagos," Strang says. "Although they lack the color of the Navajo and Hopi, or even the Apache, they are as much a part of this country as the century plant and the mountains."