Biographical Notes:

Raymond Alistair Massey was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, in 1938. He has childhood memories of the "Battle of Britain," the World War II bombing raids on London. His family immigrated, after the war, to Canada and then Buffalo, New York, where Massey graduated from Hutchinson Technical High School and attended the University of Buffalo as a Physics major. After serving in the 1960's with the U.S. Army in Germany, Massey returned to Buffalo to work as an assistant chemist at Allied Chemical, teach skating and eventually teach himself to paint after being inspired by the works of 19th century American artists, William Harnett and Albert Bierstadt. His love for both history and sailing drew him to his chosen subject matter, historic marine art.

Massey considers his style “ idealism” rather than “realism”. In his quest to be as historically accurate as his research will allow, he does extensive research in museums and libraries across the United States and the Greenwich Museum in England. Ray has traveled to Tahiti, Hong Kong, the Pearl River, the Pacific Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands to enhance his knowledge of specific geography - the color of the land, the sea and the sky , mountains and seacoasts - to bring life to the extensive research he has done for each painting. Massey agrees that what the artist sees and remembers of a seascape or landscape, shapes the romantic imagination that gives a painting its artistic beauty beyond any photographic record.

In his recently published book on Contemporary American Marine Art, Bound for Blue Water, author and art critic, J. Russell Jinishian writes, "None of the nineteenth-century trade routes are steeped in as much romance as those of China and the South Seas- from the untouched Polynesian atolls to the exotic ports of the Far East. ...no twentieth -century artist, until Ray Massey, ever made a thorough and complete study of the China trade. The twenty-five-painting series he completed in 1990 covers in meticulous detail the China trade's major vessels and ports, including the famous clippers Flying Cloud, Challenger, and Sea Serpent and their ports of call-Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore and stops in between."

Since 1990 Massey has completed over 70 paintings chronicling the exploration of the Pacific with emphasis on Captain James Cook's exploration of Hawaii and Tahiti.