"For me art is all about communicating a feeling. In my own work I am searching for four key elements. The first and most important for me is to capture the feel, mood or atmosphere of a specific place or time. I feel my paintings only succeed if they communicate to the viewer what I was feeling at the time I was painting it. That is one reason why I find it so hard to paint in the studio - the emotion has passed.

The second is to translate that feeling into an abstract design of shapes and colors on the canvas that is aesthetically pleasing, independent of subject matter. The third element, related to the previous one, is to leave evidence of the process of creation in the finished work. In my work I often use fairly loose brushwork and impasto passages of paint, not to mention the occasional grain of sand or blade of grass! I feel this makes the painting more interesting because it lets the viewer bounce between seeing the painting as an abstraction of reality and seeing the scene it represents.

The final element I search for is to leave some of the interpretation up to the imagination of the viewer by not rendering or describing everything. This lets the viewer get involved in the painting by bringing his or her own experiences into it in a more personal way. Trying to accomplish all of this in two hours before the light changes, the wind blows my canvas over, or the rain soaks me to the skin is why my pile of reject paintings is so high!

In setting myself this challenge, my work is constantly evolving and each painting is a frozen moment on a journey that I have no idea where will end. It is this journey that I share with those who have been collecting my work."

Raybould holds a Masters in Arts from Cambridge University, England and his work was recently chosen for a prestigious award in the Carmel Art Festival "Plein Air" landscape painting competition from work entered by over seventy leading US plein air artists. His work has been exhibited in the Monterey Museum of Art and is held in numerous private collections worldwide.

He was recently invited by the Monterey Museum of Art to participate in its "Land and Legacy" exhibition in 2002 of paintings of areas of the Big Sur coastline that have been preserved by the Big Sur Land Trust. Besides the Carmel Art Association, he shows in Carmel at the Galerie Plein Aire and Lyons Head Gallery. He lives in nearby Pacific Grove.

As well as painting in California, Raybould often paints in Tuscany, Italy, where he gives an annual plein air painting workshop. For more details on his workshop, see his website.