Born in
Watford,
United Kingdom, Mead studied under
John Nash and Randolph Schwab at the
Slade School of Art in London, graduating in 1939. During World War II, he moved to
New York where he trained American pilots in combat flying. Sometime around 1943, he went to New York and first saw American abstraction in the work of
Stuart Davis. In 1946, he moved to
Hamilton, Ontario, where he befriended
Hortense Gordon, who with him became a member of
Painters Eleven. Later, in Toronto, he worked for
MacLaren Advertising Co. as art director. In 1958, Mead moved to Montreal to work at the MacLaren's branch there, and became associated, through the dealer of his Montreal gallery, Denyse Delrue, with Quebec abstract artists such as
Guido Molinari and
Claude Tousignant who also showed their work with her. Mead's finely-tuned work has been called "a dry-martini sort of art". William Ronald put it this way, of Mead's work: "Ray was the most intellectual of the 11 of us". Mead uses colour adroitly. For him, discovery was central - he tries to put his "accidents" to work. Having returned to Toronto in 1987, he worked continuously until his death in 1998 in
Toronto. A posthumous
retrospective of his work was held at the Howard Scott Gallery in New York City in 1998.
Ray Mead: A Survey - Five Decades of Work was held in 2014 at Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto. == Selected public collections ==