Artist Who Just Celebrated His 90th Birthday Exhibits His Dark Occult Works For First Time At The Witchcraft Museum In Cleveland
The Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland is presenting the dark occult works of Ray Robinson, an artist living in quietude in Nova Scotia, for the first time . The exhibition will open November 17th 2021 and continue through January 15 2022. The exhibition was produced by (me) his longtime apprentice of 40 years, who has not spoken to him since 1992, but has remained in contact by email, and who now lives in Brooklyn.
Not long after my apprenticeships with Ray Robinson began, he began to call me calls me “grasshopper”, (a reference to the 1970’s TV show “Kung Fu”) and I still, in vain, try to snatch the pebble from his hand.
It has been a journey of magic, lucid dreams, and doing my best to be worthy of his teachings. I hope in presenting this exhibition of his captivating works, I have made a small dent in the massive debt I owe Ray Robinson, without whose influence, I would be a thin shadow of the man I am..
In this exhibition of dark paintings produced between 2015 and 2016, the artist confronts his native England’s often difficult – and contentious history with witchcraft. Depicted are apparitions, possessions, witch burnings and hangings, sacred stones, and much more..
Ray Robinson was born in the UK in 1931 and began his professional career as a mathematician. In the early 1960’s while in his 30’s, he sought a significant change of course in his life and was accepted as a student at the prestigious SLADE School of Fine Art in London. There, he befriended and exhibited alongside many of the major British artists such as David Hockney, Frank Auerbach, Henry Moore, and others.
Upon entering the professional world, he was given a teaching post at the Bath Academy of Arts in England. Due to his controversial teaching methods being challenged, and a subsequent rebellion by his faithful students, Ray decided to make a move across the Atlantic, where he eventually ended up as Art Department head at a community college in Sarnia, where we met.. This led to a 40 year relationship of master/student which culminates in this exhibition of captivating and cinematically atmospheric works which tell a true account similar to the famous 1968 Michael Reeves/Vincent Price film “The Witchfinder General”.
“The Witch trials in England were conducted from the 15th century until the 18th century. They are estimated to have resulted in the death of between 500 and 1000 people, 90 percent of whom were women. The witch hunt was as its most intense stage during the civil war and the Puritan era of the mid 17th century. -excepted from The Witches’ Europe 1400-1700: historical and anthropological studies, 1987
All images used with permission from the artist.
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