Capturing Nature’s Beauty

Approximately 15 months ago, one of Raymond M. Byram’s prominent collectors strongly encouraged him to come out with a coffee table book of his work.

As Byram states, “This collector and friend spent about 45 minutes truly convincing me it was the right thing to do.” So Byram looked into it and in late 2014 started working on the book finishing it by the end of April 2015.

It is a hard cover, 9×12” coffee table book entitled, “The Art of Raymond Byram: A Labor of Love.” The book is dedicated to his son, Sam Byram who passed away from cystic fibrosis on December 2, 2014. It is 64 pages of beautiful imagery of Mr. Byram’s oils, serigraphs and etchings with descriptions of the different mediums, writings about the individual pieces as well as art in general, as well as articles by gallery owners and art historian about Byram’s work.

The book was printed in July and has since sold over 300 copies. Barnes and Noble recently placed an order and Books-A-Million has also expressed interest. Regarding another new development. A friend and fellow professional artist encouraged Byram to come out with notecards of his work. In early June he picked 10 images, oils from his book and printed 400 notecards of each.

To Byram’s great surprise, he sold virtually all of them in five weeks. So logically, he has come out with many more, 18 different notecards at this point and plans on many more very soon. Byram is selling them to Hallmark gift shops and bookstores across the nation. He has travelled extensively in 2015 selling his books, notecards and his art work to hundreds of locations.

The Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon, VA now carries his work and he will be doing a painting of the inn for them, and they plan to carry the prints and notecards. The Shenandoah National Park is also now carrying his work and subsequently Byram took many photographs along the Skyline Drive he plans to paint for the park. They will carry those prints and notecards as well as other locations of the national park system.

Byram has had numerous exhibitions in a variety of art galleries locally and nationally throughout 2015. He is always working on new oils. From his great personal loss of his son he has determined to fight back with a vengeance, creating more beauty and inspiration.

About Raymond M. Byram

Byram was born and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He received his primary and secondary education in area schools. He earned his Bachelors of Fine Arts from Indiana University, graduating in 1976. Byram is the co-founder of the Indiana University Art Museum, which he accomplished while completing a museum internship.

Byram has been painting in oil since 1969. Presently, a free-lance artist working in oils, watercolor and printmaking, he has done extensive commission work for private and corporate collections.

Although he has worked in a variety of genres, styles and mediums from abstract to surreal to neo-realism, from oils to watercolors, etchings, woodcuts and serigraphy, it has been landscapes in oil that have been his primary pursuit. His love of nature, the Appalachian forests in conjunction with his love of Impressionism have combined to synthesize his individual style, which he calls a “tight impressionism.” Byram explains, “At quick glance my style obviously looks realistic, yet I employ the theories and approach of the Impressionists.”

In the late 80’s, Byram discovered a medium that would revolutionize his work and his career; serigraphy — silk screen print making. Most serigraphy is basically a stencil process, working directly on the screen, whereas Byram works from the opposite premise by doing a painting first and then hand separation from it using a separate sheet of acetate for each color and red opaquing pen to duplicate every speck of the one color he is picking out.

Unlike most serigraphy, this gives the finished work a much stronger, painterly effect. Thus far, Byram has done from 16 to 22 colors per serigraph. This very tedious separation process takes him up to 200 hours to complete. Each color is individually hand pulled, layering one over another until each color is complete. There is no room for error.

Byram’s oils are almost exclusively done with small palette knives rather than brushes. Byram finds his inspiration throughout the eastern mountains and forests, particularly in the North Georgia and North Carolina. He also finds it in the local roads around his home in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina where he resides with his son Sam and Jack the wonder dog.

The artist explains, “There are so many beautiful roads, even the well traveled, where it’s difficult or impossible to just stop in your tracks and take it all in — the winding roads, the light filtering through the trees. That lighting effect is what I’ve been keying in on. That sense of ‘realness’ to me, it is a very special spiritual magical thing.”

Ray Byram
239 McGuire Rd.
Pisgah Forest, NC 28768
(828) 877-6509
www.raybyram.com