About Raymond

 

Bio

Raymond McKenzie is a Columbus based artist whose works include painting photography and ceramics. Raymond studied photography and dance at Otterbein University. His photography training’s focus on black & white film taught him to focus on composition with an emphasis on contrast and texture rather than colors.

 

Raymond continued his art studies at The Clay Studio in San Francisco with a focus on hand building and sculpting along side veteran artists. His ceramic work explored the movement and texture of the materials. Using random mixed glazes, he de-emphasized the need for uniform color and instead let the play of glaze on clay to create it’s own identity. 

Raymond's painting work explores the play of colors and texture to create a sense of space and memory. Using palette knives, house painting brushes and a limited palette of colors, Raymond allows the colors to build layers creating a sense of space, shadow and distance.

 

Growing up in Michigan on the Great Lakes, the natural world had a significant influence on my development. As a teenager I spent many days sitting on the shores of Lake Erie and watching the horizon, especially that space where the air touches the water. This visual became the background for daydreaming about my future. “Who did I want to be? Where would I go? What would I do? What would the world be like there?”. It was in this depth of cloud, water, land, and air that I would find myself and more importantly find dreams of who I would become.

 

When I wasn’t at the lake, I would be riding my bike through country highways. Whipping through wooded areas and seeing the stretching farm lands.  Riding as fast as I could, imagination taking me to all of the places in my books, the landscape became blurs of color and patterns. 

 

My paintings are only roughly planned before I start, I know the palette of colors I’m using and an idea of an emotion I want to evoke. Sometimes that feeling changes as the painting evolves and takes me somewhere else. I use a combination of thick viscous paint worked with a palette knife with washes applied with house painting brushes. This combination allows me to work the paint in different ways in between layers.