I recently sat down with the painter and Delaware County resident Ralph McRae.

In dry fly-fishing, the delicate feathers of the fly float, just touching the surface of the water. It’s beautiful, and quiet, and peaceful. Painting is the same way. You have to outsmart nature, just in another medium. To a certain extent, it’s all deception; faking a fly with tied feathers in order to catch a trout, or painting a landscape. Either way you have a front row seat on nature …. Look, I paint from the photographs that I take of the region. In a lot of circles, that’s not acceptable, but our whole lives, whether we want to admit it or not, is arbitrated by the mass media. I don’t think that my work looks like painting from the 19th century, though it’s been referred to as such. I don’t really agree with that, because my painting is what is in front of me now. It is contemporaneous, though it’s seen initially through the lens of my camera. It really can’t help but be contemporary.

“You know I began working in advertising in New York in the 1970’s. I worked as an art director, photographer and video maker for big name advertising firms, with premium client lists. It was high-tech, cutting-edge advertising. I worked when things were just beginning to be computerized. Because I had such a strong background in art history and knowledge of Bauhaus typography, having studied with Peter Selz in UC Berkley, I was hired as art director and historical consultant on the first computer-generated type machine in the world.

“During this time, I lived in a loft in Tribeca on Thomas Street (Trauma Street) that turned Co-op. It was miserable. I was making a lot of money, and had good jobs, but it became so much responsibility. Also, when I got up in the morning and went to the coffee shop, there were artists talking about art; at lunch, artists talking about art; at dinner, artists talking about art. I was really tired of it. I was burned out, but conflicted about leaving my job and NYC. Of course, I’m not conflicted now—just broke.

“Around that time, I had begun to come up state with my neighbor in Tribeca, Larry Engel, who at the time was illustrating op-eds for The New York Times. Larry had a house in Delaware County in Meredith. He introduced me to fly-fishing and I began to come up more often. I loved fly-fishing and began to take long rides on my motorcycle looking for trout streams to fish. It was so beautiful, so I began taking photographs for myself. It got to the point where we didn’t want to go back to New York. So I moved. I love the woods and I love stone houses, so I sold my loft in the city which allowed me to buy a beautiful stone house on a heavily wooded lot near Treadwell. I built a studio with large windows with a view of the woods.

“I began painting when I left New York City for upstate in 1989, but I began to paint seriously one winter, when I had lost the use of my car, and was stuck at home. Out of boredom, I began painting from the photographs I took of the area. That loss of my car turned out to be a great gift. You know, I’m essentially new to painting. I’m essentially a novice. My working method has evolved out of my personal experience and I’m content to be here, teaching myself—learning with each painting. My painting is direct. It’s what’s in front of me; a straightforward appreciation of nature. There’s no glazing, no mediums, and maybe half a teaspoon of paint. I’ve dropped out of asking those questions of Modernism, of is it new, is it different, is it avant-garde. Those things create a big conundrum. I’m going for what’s right in front of me. Straightforward. As far as worrying about the art world, or what people think, I guess what I’m saying is, that when you’re fishing, you don’t mail a trout to someone to see what they think about it. It is what it is. I wander around taking photos, I make inkjet prints and paint. I focus on a small repertoire of scenes in nature, which allows me to look at the landscape in various conditions. It has given me the opportunity to express different moods with same or similar landscapes, to capture the emotional resonance of the scene. My only question is how to make it look beautiful. The landscape is never the problem; the problem is making the painting beautiful.

“This place is so sincere. It’s serene, not harsh. It’s on a human scale. I can look out the window of my studio, summer and winter, and it has allowed me to recover a better equilibrium. It’s helped me be more centered, more planted, more down-to-earth. I don’t look for stimulation anymore.

“I feel that I’ve earned the right at this particular time, to be able to stop and think and have a certain isolation; to stop and get off the bus, without all those distortions. Just pure, clear thinking. You know, I’ve read a lot of biographies of artists and musicians and find that they all have in common an ability to find refuge from the events of the day. My life in painting is much more conducive to contemplation, to meditation. It’s peaceful. Almost paradise to me.”

Ralph McRae’s paintings can be seen at the Delhi Art & Antiques Gallery in Delhi, NY and at Windham Fine Arts in Windham, NY.

Maureen Clavel is an artist, writer, editor, & antique book restorer. She lives in Delaware County, NY.