Sad news regarding Ray Harm. I enjoyed Ray's paintings very much and working
with Ray in my naturalist position with the KY St Parks and LBL, many good
memories. Excellent person, naturalist and artist who will be greatly missed.
Ed Ray Hopkins Co.
On Monday, April 20, 2015 2:13 PM, "brainard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<brainard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<!--#yiv6126164553 DIV {margin:0px;}-->Ray Harm was a life member of the Ky.
Ornithological Society and until the early 2000s was listed as the Society's
"Staff Artist" ... many of his prints graced the cover of the Society's
quarterly journal, The Kentucky Warbler, over the years.
bpb, Louisville
Wildlife artist Ray Harm, who was born in West Virginia but found a very
successful career as a full-time artist after moving to Kentucky in 1962, died
April 9 at his home in Sonoita, Ariz. He was 87. His daughter Linda Stampf
said the cause was prostate cancer. Harm’s works became wildly popular after
he met Louisville businessman Wood Hannah Sr., who worked with Harm in 1962 to
launch Ray Harm Wildlife Art Inc., an enterprise that made photo-offset
reproductions of Harm’s wildlife paintings. At the time, Harm was a truck
driver living just outside Cleveland, and Hannah commissioned him to do
painting of more than 20 Kentucky birds. “We were living in Ohio, and after
Mr. Hannah helped him start some of the print business, his career became a
rags to riches story, really,” Stamph said. Harm is survived by his wife of
nearly 37 years, Cathy, who is a clay artist, as well as his children including
Stampf of Richmond, Ray “Hap” Harm Jr. of Georgetown and Barbara Jo Harm of
California. He also is survived by two adopted children and a sister, Elsie
Cole of Geneva, Ohio. The same year Harm started the business with Hannah,
he received a commission to paint a family of eagles for President John F.
Kennedy. The business later became Frame House Gallery located on East
Market Street. In 1973, the company's sales hit $2.8 million and was sold the
following year to a Chicago advertising agency. Hannah died in 1989. Before
meeting Hannah, Harm had worked as cowboy in Wyoming and then as a bull rider
and saddle-bronc and bareback-bronc rider in the rodeo circuit. His service
during World War II as a Navy radio operator helped him later benefit from the
GI Bill and attend the Cleveland Institute of Art and Cooper School of Art.
After moving to Kentucky, he was named University of Kentucky’s Herman L.
Donovan Artist-in-Residence and became an official naturalist and lecturer for
the state park system. In 1999, Décor magazine named Harm as one of the most
influential artists of the past 100 years. “What was most amazing about him
to me was how he drew people into enjoying nature and the knowledge he had of
it. It was very important for him that everything was technically correct in
his work in terms of anatomy and such,” Stampf said. In Kentucky, he was
also known as an environmental leader he successful fought to block a dam that
would have flooded the Red River Gorge. He had even lay in the path of a
bulldozer for his cause. Harm lived in Berea, then in Nelson County from the
early 1960s to mid-1970s, before moving to Arizona.
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2015/04/16/popular-wildlife-artist-ray-harm-dies/25903633/
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