Ray Grathwol

(Sandusky, Ohio, 1900 - 1993, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio)

North America, American

Grathwol, a tire builder at Firestone, was also a serious self-taught artist who won awards locally and exhibited nationally. He took up painting as a hobby in 1936, attending classes taught by WPA artists, reading art books in the public library, and copying images from magazines to pick up fundamental skills and knowledge. Grathwol derived his own compositions, most often landscapes and seascapes, from a combination of memory and imagination. The artist created his watercolors and oil paintings in the basement of his Cuyahoga Falls home and designed and built his own frames. Grathwol exhibited at the Akron Art Institute, Canton Art Institute, Massillon Museum, Carnegie Art Institute (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and the National Academy Galleries in New York.

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