“The essential thing was to maintain the reality of the painting, and to make certain that it did not owe its being to transient effects of colour and constant light changes, that it had a reality within itself.”

(Ray Mead re: Door, 1961 in
The Best Contemporary Canadian Art, by Joan Murray published by Hurtig Publishers, 1987, Edmonton)

Ray Mead was born in Watford , Hertfordshire , England in 1921. He studied at the Slade School in England from 1937 to 1939, obtaining an education in draughtsmanship and painting. During the war, Mead lived in Hamilton training pilots for the RAF at Mount Hope . In 1946, he returned to Ontario , intent on restarting his art career in earnest. The turning point in Mead’s career came when he was invited to exhibit with several Toronto painters in 1953 at the downtown Toronto Simpsons store. This was the beginning of the Painters Eleven. (Kazuo Nakamura, Jack Bush, Harold Town, William Ronald, Jock MacDonald, Hortense Gordon, Tom Hodgson, Oscar Cahen, Alexandria Luke and Walter Yarwood) In 1958 Mead moved to Montreal , where he stayed for 29 years, painting, working and raising a family. He now lives in Toronto .

Ray Mead has exhibited extensively since 1957, and is recognized as one of the greats of Canadian Contemporary Art. Exhibitions include Recent Paintings by Ray Mead and Walter Yarwood Greenwich Gallery, Toronto (1957), Loranger Gallery (1957), Non-Figurative Artists of Montreal National Gallery of Canada (traveling-1960/61), Galerie Denyse Delrue, Montreal (1960, 1961), Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (1960), The Formal Lyricists Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1960), La Peinture Canadienne Moderne, 5th Festival des Deux Mondes, Spoleto, Italy (1962), Ray Mead and Paterson Ewen Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1963), Dynanisme ‘64 Galerie du Siecle, Montreal (1964), Centennial Exhibition Art Gallery of Hamilton (1967), Art Gallery of Oshawa (1968), Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (1971), National Gallery of Canada (1972), Toronto Painting 1953-63 Art Gallery of Ontario (1972) Painters Eleven Art Gallery of

Peterborough (1974), Canadian Landscape Drawings Mckenzie Gallery, Peterborough (1975), Spectrum ‘75 Sudbury Arts Festival (1975), Painters Eleven Tom Thomson Memorial Gallery and Museum of Fine Art, Owen Sound (1975) Painters Eleven Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (1975), Painters Eleven Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Oshawa (1976), The Gallery, Stratford (1978), Glendon Gallery, York University, Toronto (1978), Gallery One, Toronto (1978), Theo Waddington Gallery, Montreal (1978), Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (1978) and Painters Eleven In Retrospect (1979), Theo Waddinton Galleries, Toronto (1980), Lindsay Art Gallery (1981), Two Decades: Ray Mead Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (1982), Waddington & Shiel Galleries, Toronto (1984, 1985) and Ray Mead: Recent Paintings (1988), Chicago International Art Exposition (1987, 1988), Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (1987), Ray Mead: Recent & Historical Paintings Moore Gallery, Hamilton (1988), Ray Mead: the Papers Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (traveling-1988/89), Rene Shand Gallery, Amsterdam (1989), International Art Exposition, Madrid (1990), Achieving The Modern Winnipeg Art Gallery (traveling-1992/93), The Crisis Of Abstraction In Canada, National Gallery of Canada (traveling-1993/95), Painters Eleven - U.S. Tour Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (traveling-1993/95), Abstractions Art First, London, England (1994), A Major Exhibition of Work Moore Gallery, Hamilton (1995)