Ted Raftery works

As a child in England, Ted was constantly drawing and painting, mostly from his imagination. In his early teens he realized that he achieved better results when he sketched from nature.

He joined an art club and was able to draw from live models and plaster casts. This improved his skills markedly but he never attended an art school to receive formal tuition as at that time art schools were only teaching graphic arts and various modernism’s in vogue at that time.

Teds interest lay in a more traditional approach and he continued along that path. By his early twenty’s he was married and had a family and job as an electrician. His painting became sporadic for a while but he continued to study the fine art in the English public art galleries, such as the National Gallery in London and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

On immigrating to Canada in 1974, the landscape here inspired him to take up the brush and palette again. At first he painted prairie scenes and grain elevators and always the big Alberta sky he admired so much. His interest in cross-country skiing led him to also paint mountain winters. By 1978 he had placed paintings with the Gainsborough Galleries in Calgary, and they were selling readily.

At the time he decided to quit his job and to paint full time. With the help of the Gallery he was able to make a living on his sales.

Now Ted’s painting grace the walls of many corporations and businesses and also many private homes in Canada, UK, USA, Hong Kong, Australia and many other places around the world.

Since the closing of Gainsborough at the end of 2018, Ted now has found a new Gallery to represent him in Calgary, at Webster Galleries in the SE of the city. Webster’s hopes to continue to expose new people to Ted’s work and provide a venue for his many avid followers for years to come.