"I spent the early part of my life fascinated by all modes of artistic expression, trying everything I could on, singing for bands, exploring my personal aesthetic vision through different mediums.  Anything that I do creatively comes from pure emotion, it's an expression of things that lie beneath the surface.  

I've always been inspired by nature, I think it is obvious in my work.  I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii in 2008, and began working on a private botanical estate called Hale Mohalu, in Opihikao.  While I was working and living there, I began to have waking dreams, and experiences of orbs of light moving along the old ancestral trails of lower Puna.  I've always had a sensitivity to the energy of plants and natural forms, drawing inspiration and wisdom from them.  This experience of the orbs has solidified that connection however, and I feel that in some ways the orbs are emmisaries of the spirits of the plants.  I give voice to these things which have no voice through my artwork, and try to capture a piece of the energy that they carry in the canvases that I create. 

My whole life I've been aware of this undercurrent of the natural world, but being on the big island of Hawaii has intensified that experience, made it more tangible somehow, as if through my creation I am a speaker for these invisible and subtle things.

The paintings come to me already formed, as if they already exist somewhere, and Im merely receiving the transmission of their physical form.  The paint becomes like music, weaving a song across the open space of the canvas, telling a story through color and light that can only be told through this medium."

Ray Massini, Spring 2009