Click on images for full view
Ray Goodluck draws inspiration from animals he grew up around and from his ancestors. Ray started painting in 2019 and sees the painting process as therapeutic and hopes his art can do the same for those who collect it. As a self taught artist he has realized this is his life passion. He is happy and blessed to share his paintings with you and the world. Ray Goodluck grew up in the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, and is from the clans, “Mud People”, “One Who Walks Around One”, “Water That Flows Together” and “Blacksheep”. Before painting Ray was an iron worker out of Local 40 in New York City, where he was the first and only Navajo. In April 2019, Ray was working on the new Raiders stadium in Las Vegas, when he was injured on the job site. This injury led to him becoming wheel chair bound, stuck at home frustrated having nothing to do but watch TV while focusing on rehabilitation. In May of the same year his girlfriend saw this frustration and left out a painting set she had got him in Christmas of 2018 in hopes it would give him something to focus his time on and ease his mind. This is where it all started. First Ray painted a horse, something he had grew up around, and he says “it looked NOTHING like a horse”. So he moved on to something else special to him, and eagle. Once again “it looked nothing like an eagle”. Then he landed on painting a portrait. Ray says “This one was the most difficult and frustrating, and also the worst of them all by far.” At this point he says he had two choices, give the art set to his kids and focus on getting back to iron working, OR take the challenge as “if it was easy everyone would be a great artist”. From this point on, Ray has spent all of his time painting. Focusing his attention on making great pieces of art like the ones we see today. But this is only the beginning and Ray’s work has already been featured in the “Native American Art” magazine, as well as, a three page feature in “Western Art Collector”.