The artists in front of Ray’s camera are:

Sepi Valeriu

Ann Healey

Claude Verly (manager)

Ray Ong (artist photographer)

Einstein Kristiansen

Christiane Wyler

Images of art: the artist in front of the camera

Art is a reflection of the artists who creates it. They transfer part of themselves onto the canvas, writing their thoughts, feelings and responses to the world through the medium of their brush. This aspect of art too often remains unseen; the viewer sees only the finished work and thereby misses part of the communicative element of art.

Ray Ong is a photographer, another kind of artist, who paints with the camera, snapping moments and freezing them forever. By placing the artist in front of his camera Ray has intervened with the artistic process and added this missing dimension – the artist captured in the process of creating, the transfer of ideas from a mind, to the hand, to the canvas.

The artist laughs as she paints; the colours, some bright, some subdued, are swept onto the paper to reflect her inner feelings. She takes a pen and writes; she is a poet who adds her words to her colours.

Another artist frowns in concentration as she bends over the table at which she works. The room is infused with strong, bold ‘rainbows’ of colour that she arranges and rearranges until her subconscious acknowledges that everything is as it should be. She stops and contemplates her work and suddenly breaks into a smile and then laughs as the inner feelings she was trying to express fall out onto the colours before her.

This artist is a clown who takes hold of the same colours and creates painted childlike space of talking animals and dayglo patterns to lighten up a world that is constantly reminding us of sorrow. The crazy alter world of an artist casts away that heavy load and reminds us that we need to live, we need to immerse ourselves in laughter and join his universe of colour.

But the colours of life may also be more sombre and this artist draws on the contrasts of sorrow and joy in different aspects of his work. He focuses for a while on a huge canvas stretched across a wall. The upturned faces portrayed are heavy with sorrow as they gaze at the crucifixion and weep. The artist turns away and adds a few strokes to a portrait of a beautiful, smiling woman. He keeps his thoughts well hidden, and yet we somehow know that there is a connection.

To understand another artist we need to see the dance of his brush across the canvas. It twists and turns and sweeps in an arc in time to the rhythm of his arm. Until you see the artist dance through his work you cannot truly appreciate the rhythm of the finished work.

And so do all the artists work to a rhythm, and inner rhythm of thoughts and feelings. This is the source of their creation, and this is what the camera has captured.

Dr. Sian E. Jay