In an obituary in The Guardian, Ghislaine Kenyon described Smith as "the complete artist", and despite having had no formal art training, "he expressed himself playfully in words, music and visual arts, using myriad techniques and media."[2]
During this period, Smith also designed and illustrated album covers for several bands and musicians, including experimental rock group Henry Cow, and new wave band Heaven 17.[2] Smith had met some of the members of Henry Cow at Cambridge,[4] and joined the group at concerts as a performance artist in the early 1970s, miming with glove puppets, ironing, and reading "short passages of discontinuous text" during breaks in the music.[5] He then went on to produce his distinctive "paint sock" cover art work for Henry Cow's first three albums. Smith created them with a pastry bag that he used to squeeze out long strips of acrylic paint, which, once dry, he wove together to produce the socks.[4][6]
In 1971, Smith married Catriona Hermon, a fellow student at Cambridge. He illustrated two of her children's books, The Long Slide (1977) and The Long Dive (1978), and won two awards in 1978 for his work in The Long Slide. Kenyon said the illustrations "are lovely early examples of Ray's precise, whimsical style."[2] Smith went on to write and illustrate a children's book of his own, Jacko's Play (1980), followed by a series of DK art books between 1984 and 1995. One of them, The Artist's Handbook (1987) had its fourth edition published in 2008.[2] Smith also served as consulting editor for DK's Art School series.[7]
Smith explored several art forms, including sculpture, painting and portrait photography, and he exhibited his work widely.[8] He was self-employed and much of his output was commissioned. Among Smith's many commissions were a ceramic tile painting spanning three floors at St. Mary's Hospital on the Isle of Wight, two stone and steel sculptures for the Leeds Development Agency at Quarry Hill, Leeds in 1994, and a portrait of archaeologist Colin Renfrew in 2000.[2][7][9]
Smith created a number of painted steel sculptures, including Hind in 2001, a 5m high sculpture at the Boston Manor House in Brentford, commissioned by the Green Corridor Partnership, and Chain Reaction in 1992, a 12m sculpture for the New Towns Campbell Park, Milton Keynes.[9] Smith's Red Army (1990), a painted steel sculpture of 1,000 pieces was commissioned by, and featured at, the 1990 Gateshead National Garden Festival; it has since been relocated to Frank Lloyd Wright's Kentuck Knob home in Pennsylvania in the United States.[8]
Smith's first solo exhibition was at the School of Architecture at Cambridge in 1970, and he hosted many more during his career, including at the Spacex Gallery in Exeter in 1987, and at the Winchester Gallery in Winchester in 1990.[7] He has also shown his work at numerous group exhibitions in Britain and elsewhere, including at the British Art Show in 1983–84, and the 2nd International Drawings Triennale in Nuremberg, Germany.[9]
Smith received many awards during his career, including the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition in 1989, and the 1993 Royal Society of Arts: Art for Architecture Award. On the Crest of a Wave (1996), a Portland stone and green Kirkstone sculpture commissioned by the Dover Public Art Commission, won Smith the 1996 Rouse Kent Public Art Award. He also won a number of competitions for his sculptures, including Face to Face (1992) for the Birmingham City Council, and Eights Tree (2001) for Sustrans and the RC Sherriff Trust. Smith consulted on several art projects, including serving as lead artist for the construction of the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children from 1997 to 2001.[8]
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