Ray Harm

Ray Harm (November 9, 1926 – April 9, 2015) was an American artist, best known for his paintings of wildlife, primarily birds. He was also well known for art publicity and is generally attributed as the co-creator of the limited edition art print market, which supplanted the customary method where artists sold original works on an individual basis. Limited edition art prints are now the usual method of promotion paintings and same works to the general public.

Harm was born Ray Auvil in Randolph County, West Virginia; his dad was a concert violinist who also was a woodsman and herbalist. His make known was untouched to Harm after his parents divorced and his mother remarried to William Harm. He left West Virginia in his mid teens to become a cowboy in the American West, eventually competing on the rodeo circuit and in addition to training horses for the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

His give support to in the United States Navy during World War II allowed him to take advantage of the GI Bill for continuing education. Harm used the opportunity to enroll in art educational and afterwards became a painter. While selling individual paintings, Harm worked in construction and horse training to make ends meet.

In 1961 Harm's action attracted the attention of Wood Hannah, a businessman and art miser from Louisville, Kentucky. The two men came happening with the idea of making high-quality art prints of Harm's paintings, which would be issued in limited print runs. The idea was a good success and gave birth to a publicity method for art that has brought commercial and financial attainment to thousands of artists.

In 1963, he was appointed the first H. L. Donovan Artist-in-residence at the University of Kentucky.

Harm highly developed wrote a weekly natural world column for The Louisville Times, and was a popular speaker and lecturer. Harm was a frequent guest on the radio call-in show Metz Here, hosted for many years by Milton Metz upon Louisville's WHAS-AM.

In his far along life, Harm became a severe critic of artists who copy their works from photographs by tracing directly higher than them or projecting an image onto a canvas and later tracing. This practice is now widespread throughout the limited-edition art industry. Harm has prided himself upon basing his paintings on his own sketches taken from take up observations of wildlife. On occasion, Harm says he has used museum models of wildlife to get positive details correct, but otherwise his paintings come directly from his own work.

Harm closed production of prints from his major increase in the late 1990s, with 195 pieces in the collection. He continued to attain occasional works as fundraisers for various organizations. Harm and his wife, Cathy, eventually left Kentucky and settled upon a ranch in Arizona, where he continued to work. His son, Ray Harm Jr. (better known as "Hap"), lives in Kentucky and sells prints from indigenous works by his daddy that were not a allocation of the indigenous major collection.

An archive of Harm's signed prints, newspaper clippings, field notes, black and white photographs, exhibition catalogs, gallery announcements and 53 pieces of original correspondence is housed at the Filson Historical Society in Louisville. Harm died in Sonoita, Arizona on April 9, 2015.