Raymond George Neher

Because roads, streets, highways, boulevards, and freeways are an everyday part of our life, they understandably are part of our art. In the foreground or the background, they secure our art to reality, serve as symbols, or twist and turn in ways never dreamed by the imagination. Raymond Neher used roads and highways as his subject in many of his paintings. He began painting for his own benefit, because he "Enjoyed putting brush to canvas."

Raymond George Neher was born in Orange, New Jersey on September 14, 1943; he was the only child to Rudolph Neher and Evelyn Posadzki. Neher was awarded his Bachelor of Architecture form the Carnegie Mellon University and his Masters from the Columbia University. He began his career as an architect in New York City. In 1973 he transferred to San Francisco, California, where he worked on the Master Plan for a New Community in Ahwaz, Iran. He was well known and appreciated for his work in historical restorations and adaptive reuse. His projects included work on art and science museums, hotels and spas, hospital and medical school, as well as construction administration. As an artist his career spanned nearly 40 years. Neher worked mostly in acrylic paint on canvas. His works have been shown in exhibitions all across the United States of America and are in private collections throughout the United States, as well as Amsterdam, Rome and Santorini, Greece. Neher joined the Fort Mason Printmakers in the early 1980's and created etchings and monoprints that often complemented his canvas work. Many of his subjects sprang from his travels around California's Central Valley Interstate 5 highway. His roadscapes paintings he created were on photo quality. The images he creates, whether it is a highway, a bridge or a suburban street, are always free of pollution, road kill and litter. The paintings are full of colour which makes the painting a bit surreal, as if the image is just too good to be true. All his roadscapes are from the perspective a person in a vehicle on the road, making the viewer feel more engaged with the painting, as if they are actually there. The painting above is called Mount Hood Highway. Neher has used such contrasting colours to layer the painting. His use of straight lines and angles on the road, pine trees and the snow covered mountain in the background brake up the painting causing the painting to be easier to take in by the viewer. The curved lines