Eva Ray
“I love the process of discovering a new place, sketching ideas, creating a colour story, and watching a new collection evolve. I feel that working in these collections helps to encapsulate a rounded perspective of a new landscape.”
Eva Ray is a fine artist based in Kent, UK. She studied Fine Art at the University of Liverpool and then went on to complete her Jewellery Design diploma in Jaipur, India. She lived in India for six years, immersed in the vibrant aesthetics of her surroundings, including Jaipur and Kerala. Upon her return to the UK, she decided to establish herself as a fine artist, where she uses her time in India as a source of passion and inspiration.
“I worked in a village in Kerala for 6 months teaching arts and it was there my mind was opened to a new language of colour combinations, patterns and forms, and breathtaking landscapes.”
Working as a jewellery designer, Eva studied tribal motifs where her research led her to desert villages where she became fascinated by fresco murals and textures. From close observation and study of simplistic house murals and decorative marks, this awakened an interest in intuitive, quick mark-making which Eva would later incorporate into her own work. This journey led to the discovery of oil sticks where Laura has honed her unique style over the years, working predominantly on wood panels.
Eva’s paintings assemble areas of colour in blocks, or layered colour, to create patterns within these areas or the entire composition. From the close-contact medium of oil sticks and pastels, this allows the artist to feel physically close to her work, with the energy and movement created through the art of mark-making.
Her influences include post-impressionistic artists, such as Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, as well as Georgia O'Keeffe, whose large-scale botanicals left a lasting impact on Eva’s work.
