One of the best things about writing this blog is getting to meet some really cool people who are doing some really cool things.
Today, I’m pleased to introduce you to one of those cool people, Ray Easton. Ray, a lifelong Webster resident and outstanding artist, recently won the 2024 Ohio Wetlands Habitat Stamp Competition held earlier this year.
The contest, hosted annually by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, is held to select the image that will appear on the following year’s Ohio Wetlands Habitat Stamp, a required purchase for anyone 18 years or older looking to hunt waterfowl in the Buckeye State.
Ray’s painting of a bufflehead duck (above) was chosen by a panel of five judges from 34 original pieces submitted for the competition. His painting will appear on the 2025 Wetlands Habitat Stamp. It was the first time that Ray had ever entered the contest.
Ray has been drawing and painting pretty much all his life. He discovered wildlife art when he was a junior at RL Thomas High School, where he studied art under Bill Stephens. He likes to work from photographs and spends a lot of time out in nature with his camera, every season of the year.
Birds, especially waterfowl, are just a few of Ray’s favorite subjects. More recently he’s also turned to painting landscapes. “I got more into those when COVID started,” he said, “when everybody was working from home.”
“I had a lot of time to start thinking about land,” he added. “I always wanted to do some more impressionistic stuff … loosen up a little bit. It was a nice little therapy and I grew a lot in my other work just by loosening up in the landscapes.”
And this is not the first competition he’s entered — or even won. He competes in the Federal Duck Stamp contest every year and regularly submits entries to other state programs. In 1997 he won the New York Waterfowl Duck Stamp competition with his painting of a hooded merganser. Last fall his painting of three northern pintails took first in the National Duck Stamp Collectors Society annual contest, and he most recently took third place in the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission 2024 Quail and Turkey Stamp competition.
If you’d like to see some of Ray’s work in person, he has a piece in display now at the Mill Art Center and Gallery in Honeoye Falls and will have one in an exhibit opening soon at the Oxford Gallery in Rochester. You can also see a lot more photos of Ray’s incredible work on his Facebook page and website.
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(posted 5/4/2024)
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