My friend Ray Smith, who has died aged 69 from dementia, was the complete artist: he expressed himself playfully in words, music and visual arts, using myriad techniques and media.
Without art school training – he studied English at Cambridge University – he drew, painted, made prints and sculpture and produced award-winning public sculpture alongside schemes for schools and hospitals. One highlight is his artwork for Bristol Children’s hospital.
The son of Geoff Smith, who worked for a shipping company, and Pat (nee Pearce), Ray was educated at Southend high school for boys, Essex, and then Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating in 1971. He was intellectually gifted, though his siblings remember him principally as a boy who made things – balsa wood gliders or a mirror box with infinite reflections, for instance.
Ray started his freelance career in London, teaching English as a foreign language at the Cambridge School of English, illustrating album covers (for the bands Henry Cow and Heaven 17, for example) and lecturing at Chelsea School of Art during the 1970s and 80s.
He also illustrated picture books written by his wife, Catriona (nee Hermon), whom he had met at Cambridge and married in 1971. The Long Slide (1977), which won two awards, and The Long Dive (1978) are lovely early examples of Ray’s precise, whimsical style. His Artist’s Handbook (1987) is now in its fourth edition.
Ray was fine arts fellow at Southampton University (1978-81), lectured at Plymouth University, (1986-95), and had many solo exhibitions including at the ICA, Ikon (both 1980) and the John Hansard gallery (1982), and numerous portrait commissions, including one of the archaeologist Colin Renfrew.
A natural art-educator, Ray was on the art working group for the national curriculum in 1990 and ran workshops and lectured for the National Gallery’s education department.
With his public art Ray understood the challenges faced by artists who transform a familiar view by placing new work in it. For At Full Stretch (2002), which scaled London’s Trellick Tower, he interviewed hundreds of tenants who allowed him to install red plastic sheets in front of their balconies. Viewed from a distance these sheets formed a large red figure climbing the facade.
Years after the installation was taken down a few red patches remained visible: some tenants had kept the red sheets as wind-breaks. Ray appreciated that.
A songwriter and banjo player, Ray performed with his daughter, Emily, at bluegrass events. The quality of his diverse creative output testifies to a perfectionist work ethic, complemented by a great devotion to family.
He is survived by Catriona, their children, Emily, Henry and Camilla, three grandchildren, his mother, Pat, and siblings, Shirley, John and Peter.
