Sierra Runoff by Ray Roberts

Ray Roberts is one of California's most respected Plein Air artists. He recently won the Gold Medal for "Best Painting" at the California Art Club and the Artists' Choice Award, the highest accolade from fellow artists, at three major Southwest art events.

Roberts' vibrant use of color, bold textures, and sensitivity to shifting patterns of light give life and movement to his paintings. They are to be experienced, not merely observed.

Inspired by such early California impressionists as Hanson Puthuff, William Wendt, and William Ritschel, Ray Roberts seeks to capture the luminous, golden light and the magnificent, vanishing landscapes of his native state. Like his other great hero, Maynard Dixon, Ray Roberts shares a reverence for the land and a marked spirituality in his work.

Ray Roberts believes in the importance of artistic legacy. "There's a brotherhood of painters who came before me and who will come after. We speak in the past, present, and future. We talk about our experience and personality, our torments and exhilarations; we talk about the beauty of the fleeting light, time and of our family, friends and acquaintances."

Like many successful artists before him, Ray Roberts 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. Ray and his wife Peggi now live on a 20-acre ranch in Angel's Camp, an old California gold rush town, surrounded by the oak-studded hills which he frequently paints.