Biography:

Russell Wray was born in Rhode Island in 1955. His boyhood exploration of the woods and creeks of Massachusetts, where he grew up, and encounters with the local creatures fed a d\eep interest in, and affection for the land and its non-human inhabitants. He still recalls feeling  awestruck perceiving nature’s extreme beauty and fragility, while holding a tiny baby turtle in his hand one blue sky day. But  the weather didn’t always permit his outdoor explorations. On these occasions, Russell was often given clay by his mother, a potter, to keep him occupied and out of trouble. He would then fashion little clay animals which she would latter fire in her kiln. This began his love of sculpting, leading to his attending the Massachusetts College of Art.
Mass Art was a turning point in Russell’s life. Sculpting grew to became his passion. It was also there his attention was first drawn to problems facing the environment, when he   learned of the threat to the survival of the world’s whales posed by whaling. Whales had always stirred his imagination, and had been the subject of some of his earliest art work. Disturbed by thoughts of a whale-less world, Russell launched into a series of sculptures on the human-whale relationship. It is a series he has returned to over the years, and which has yet to end.
Following school, Russell continued art making while earning his living for a number of years working part-time in welding and woodworking shops. During this time he became increasingly involved as an environmental and political activist, volunteering with several organizations, including several years spent aboard  Greenpeace ships as crew-member and resident artist. To this day, he continues investing some of his energies into this work.
Much of what moves Russell to activism also shapes his creative work as well. His love of the natural world shows strongly in his work, both in content and in his medium of choice; wood. “I work primarily in wood. I love the way wood looks, feels, and smells. It is warm, has its own life, and comes with its own stories. Carving wood is an act of joy.”
Moving from the east coast in 1987, Russell spent ten years living and  working in Santa Fe,  New Mexico. It was there where he got his first real studio, and really sank his teeth into sculpting. There too he joined Eli Levin’s Wednesday night etching group, where he experimented with a number of the  intaglio processes, eventually finding drypoint and engraving  on copper plates to be his favorites. Being able to express his artistic impulses both two and three dimensionally keeps his creative juices flowing, and he finds that the two forms of expression both feed and balance one another.
His last year in New Mexico, Russell met Akemi who was visiting from Japan. They later married, and now make their home, along with Moon Dog, near the shores of Frenchman’s Bay in Hancock, Maine. And here also is the home of Raven Tree Gallery.