Ray Tigerman is a contemporary Southwestern artist, author, musician, and storyteller whose work is shaped by the landscapes, mythology, wildlife, people, and spirit of the American West.
Known for bold color, layered texture, and distinctive imagery, Ray creates paintings and sculptures that invite the viewer into a world that feels both familiar and mysterious. Horses, wolves, figures, symbols, and stories appear throughout his work, connected by a fascination with resilience, transformation, and the unseen forces that shape us.
Est. 1971
THE HIGH DESERT
Ray was raised in the high desert of Northern Nevada beneath the Sierra Nevada Mountains, near the Washoe Tribe Reservation. The landscape and cultures of the West surrounded him from an early age and would eventually become inseparable from his creative work.
His great-grandmother was a member of the Oklahoma Choctaw Nation, adding another layer to his early interest in Native American history, culture, symbolism, and storytelling.
Over the years, Ray developed a visual language entirely his own. His paintings and sculptures combine abstract forms, saturated color, texture, symbolism, and recognizable figures to create work that is unmistakably contemporary while remaining deeply connected to the West.
His eclectic life and travels have given him something else to draw from: stories. People met. Places experienced. Cultures encountered. Landscapes remembered. Those stories have found their way onto canvas and into sculpture, shaping work collected by both new and seasoned collectors.
THE WORK
Story has always been part of Ray's work. Eventually, some stories demanded more room than a canvas could give them.
In 2026, Ray makes his debut as a novelist with A Knight on Wolf Island, a supernatural survival horror story shaped by many of the same themes that have long appeared in his art: wilderness, mythology, isolation, transformation, fear, courage, and the unknown.
For Ray, painting and writing aren't separate creative lives. They're different ways of doing the same thing: telling a story.