Ray Burgoyne, a self-taught painter, carpenter, and musician, has died at the age of 80. He first exhibited his paintings in the late 1980s and spent the following three decades organizing numerous exhibitions along the Essex and Suffolk coastline.
A Fully Realized Vision
Ray was entirely self-taught in the art world, arriving with a seemingly fully realized and studied vision. His extensive body of work mirrored the abstract ballad that was his life—romantic, unpredictable, filled with both childlike simplicity and dark complexity. His paintings featured carnivalesque characters and forgotten landscapes, rendered in pure, deep colors.
Early Life and Career
Born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, Ray was the youngest of two children of Joseph Burgoyne, a greengrocer, and Dolly (nee Nash), who managed the paperwork for her husband's shops. His early life was marked by fierce independence: he tried riding on the back of his pet pig, Rosie, pretended to be one of Alan Ladd's cowboys, fished at the end of the pier, and drank in seafront dance halls to the soundtrack of the Shirelles.
Ray dreamed of attending art school, but after leaving Wentworth High School for Boys at age 14, he was sent to work as an apprentice carpenter at a cabinet maker's shop.
Musical Pursuits
By the early 1960s, Ray was at the heart of the emerging mod scene in Southend as a founding member and drummer for the Flowerpots, a local rhythm and blues band that opened for the Animals and the Who. He remained with the band until 1966.
Family and Work
In 1968, he married Sylvia, and they had four children: Claire, Paul, Helen, and Sam. Ray continued working as a carpenter at a boat-building yard in Leigh-on-Sea, did shop fitting and antique restoration around Essex, and installed shows for the Design Centre in central London. In the mid-1970s, he became master carpenter at the Palace Theatre in Westcliff-on-Sea, building and constructing sets for repertory productions.
Ray and Sylvia divorced in 1986, and later that year he married Gilly, a student nurse. They had two children: Phelan and the author of this obituary.
Full-Time Artist
After the family moved to the village of Friston, Suffolk, in 1999, Ray finally became a full-time artist. He exhibited both solo and in groups, primarily in the nearby seaside town of Aldeburgh, alongside established and emerging artists.
When viewers confronted his more abstract paintings—characterized by thick oil application and conjured shapes—they often asked, “So, what is it actually meant to be?” To which he would reply with his unmistakable smile, “It’s whatever you think it is.”
Ray is survived by his wife Gilly, his six children, and 15 grandchildren.
