She had a successful career as a commercial artist and portraitist; among her most famous portraits was the golfer Sam Snead.
[2] However, her passion was an idiosyncratic form of Magic realism inspired by her love of horses, New England farm life, and the Maine seacoast.
Inspired by the surrealists but demonstrating a cultivated sense of restraint in the depiction of her subject matter, Ray juxtaposed the ordinary with the fantastical.
[5] Among her various awards, Ray received the Alger Prize[6] in 1944 for "Portrait of a Young Actor" and the American Artist Magazine Medal of Honor in 1956.
[7] The Canadian poet Diana Hayes published a poem dedicated to Ruth Ray titled "Awakening" in Labyrinth of Green (Oakville, Ontario: Plumleaf Press, 2019).