Ray Guzman – “Hoboken Tempest”

October 3 - November 1, 2020.

In 1979, young Ray Guzman was living an artist’s life in Jersey City Heights, in a top-floor apartment on Ogden Avenue at Congress, with sweeping views of Hoboken and the big city beyond it. Having finished an art degree with honors at New York’s School of Visual Arts and fellowships with master printmakers in New York, Ray was creating art constantly, with enough part-time jobs and graphic design gigs to keep himself and his wife Renata afloat. 

Little did he suspect that a trip one night down the Palisades into Hoboken to hear his friend Julio Fernandez perform would change his life’s direction. On the way to the gig, Ray met a young Frank Raia, who happened to own the club where Julio was playing, and he convinced Ray and Renata to move to Hoboken for the thriving arts and music scene. By the next month, the young couple had moved to Hoboken and soon found a studio for his fledgling commercial art business that became his career.

Ray had loved living in the Heights as a boy, having moved there from the South Bronx in 1966. Hudson County seemed “like the country,” Ray said. There was so much more space, and fantastic light, and the big city was just a bus and a Path train ride away. His uncle Frank worked in the glamorous world of Madison Avenue advertising, and encouraged Ray to pursue a degree at SVA and a career in commercial art. 

But it was Hoboken that cast a spell over Ray and held him here for the next 40 years. Part of it was the characters he met while working at the El Quijote restaurant on 14th Street, which mostly served the shipyard workers of the Mile Square City. Part of it was the location, tucked under the protective arm of the ancient Palisades cliffs and connected by the Hudson River to the allure of New York City. 

In 1979, Ray embarked on a new life centered in Hoboken. It was the year he first conceived of “Hoboken Tempest,” a 10-foot-wide painting of a panoramic view of his world, inspired by El Greco’s emotionally charged panoramic of his hometown, Toledo, Spain. He created it using everything he learned at SVA about Old Master and modern techniques, starting with a white linen canvas and a charcoal underdrawing, applying layers of paint and glazes to achieve a glowing effect as though the painting were lit from within. He finished it off with oil sticks, which gives it both a gritty texture and a more direct connection to the artist’s vision that drawing can achieve, Ray says. 

Completed years later, “Hoboken Tempest” contains his whole world, Ray says, “the people I know, lights in the buildings, icons.” With three points of perspective, and three light sources, “It was a fun challenge,” he adds, explaining, “Weather can play games with your eyes, like an opening in the clouds. The painter can choose where the light comes in.

“Look closely and you see sunlight on Castle Point and Stevens campus, but closer in, the Palisades casts a shadow and lights have come on earlier. It’s not a big city, but it’s already evening where the Palisades cast a shadow. Whereas even on a cloudy day in the Heights, you feel the light.”  

It’s a painting that must be seen in person, under good lighting, to fully grasp. The Hoboken Museum will display the monumental piece, along with a couple of Hudson County portraits Ray painted around the same time, starting Saturday, October 3, through November 1. 

For Ray, Hoboken is a microcosm, dark and light, urban and village-like, compact yet teeming with stories. Ray’s painting conveys the magnetic quality that drew him in and held him spellbound in Hoboken for four decades, though the city has changed from a gritty industrial town with smokestacks, bars and dockworkers to an affluent community of boutiques, restaurants and office workers. 

By 1989, the painting was among the works Ray showed to Allan Stone, a renowned New York City gallerist who represented Wayne Thiebaud, among others. He liked Ray’s work, but told him to keep working for another year and come back again. It could have been a big break for an aspiring artist, but Ray had to make a difficult choice: with a two year old and a growing sign-making business to nurture, he decided to focus on his family and customers. Thirty years later, he couldn’t be prouder of both: His son is a teacher and dean of students at All Saints School and Ray’s “Hoboken Signs” dot the cityscape, expressing the individual characters of some of its longest-lasting restaurant and shops. Click here to see a few. 

Lately, Ray has been trying to make more room in his life for creative painting, and a few years ago he wrote a manifesto to guide his art practice:  

“You have to stop every day at 4 pm and get into the studio. No self-editing, no critique, no censorship, trust that you have the skills, let go of demons holding you back. Every day a new painting. No ‘art school thinking,’ which is a way of describing work through other people’s style and theory. Think for yourself. You’re not being truthful to yourself if you’re always comparing it to other people’s work. Break free of it.” 

Ray is in the midst of another prolific creative period, painting nearly every day, in a variety of media, from watercolor and oils, to acrylic on metal, each medium chosen to suit his subject matter. You can see his work at RayGuzmanStudios.com or on the annual Hoboken Artists Studio Tour.

Learn more about his work, his process and ask questions during his artists talk on Friday, Oct. 2 at 5 pm, or the opening reception for his show on Saturday, Oct. 3 from 2 – 5 pm.

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.