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Ray worked for 17 years in the Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto.
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Ray says that witnessing things like child abuse, surgical reconstruction, mental illness, and animal research all had a deep effect on him (and I would have to agree).
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In the space of one year, his mother and his sister had both succumbed to cancer. He was wrecked, having vivid nightmares and hallucinations. He was able to use his art as a form of therapy.
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"I often awake in the middle of the night and realize I have been wandering the hallways and corridors of the giant hospital. It is clear to me that this is the birthplace of all my imagery."
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"There was an incident while I was working in the children's hospital, in which I saw a picture of a child who was murdered. I couldn't get that out of my head. I was really coming apart. I started drawing a lot of pictures of it, and burning the pictures. I quit the hospital maybe 3 weeks later."
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"After my mother's death, I had a dream in which she appeared as a child. She showed me galleries of work. I said, 'Wow, I wish this was mine.' She said, 'It is if you want it.'"
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"If I couldn't do art I am not sure I would like to contemplate what kind of human being I would be or what I would do. I honestly think I would be in a high security prison with a thick plastic wall on my cell. I think it's best for all concerned I get to make pictures."
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"I used to construct sculptures. My neighbors would complain when I set them on fire at night in my backyard, but they never called the police, because they also did strange things, and would have had a lot of explaining to do themselves."
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"It's funny to me, the first thing people pick out. Art is truly like a mirror. If I put humor in there, a funny person will laugh. A person a little fearful will find their fear, whatever it is. That's one of the great things art does."
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"I think each of us makes a heaven or hell on this Earth, and the material we use is the stuff our lives are made of."
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