Retired teacher’s thank you comes straight from the art
Ray Nagy uses his paintings to show appreciation for front-line workers
Anyone who receives one of Ray Nagy’s thank-you paintings in the mail — and he has sent more than 100 of them already — would be impressed.
The paintings are simple but quite attractive: colourful depictions of birds and wildflowers, done small enough to fit in an envelope along with a few words of thanks for working on the front lines during the pandemic.
They might also wonder, who the heck is Ray Nagy?
He is a retired Niagara school teacher and principal with an artistic flair who took up painting at the urging of his wife, Margaret.
“She kept buying me paints — ‘Get going, Ray,’ she said. And I didn’t heed her,” he says. “Not until she passed.”
He continues: “So I’m stuck at home anyway. When this virus came along, I saw in the paper people thanking the firemen, the health workers.
“I thought, wow, it’s nice of them to thank them. How can I do that?”
His answer was in his art.
He was already painting anyway. After Margaret died four years ago, his daughter, who works at Hospice Niagara, suggested he finally follow his wife’s advice and take up painting.
It would help him through his grief, she said, and they could share the cards he painted with families there who had just lost a loved one.
Does painting help?
“Does it ever,” says Nagy, 85, who lives in Niagara Falls.
“You know, I can start a painting … I’ll sit down at nine in the morning, next thing it’s 12 o’clock and I’m still working on this picture. Time passes like that, beautifully.”
He says, “Then I put on some of (Margaret’s) music and it’s good. It’s good for me … Four years. I can’t believe it.”
Before he retired from teaching, the two of them used to make puppets for kindergarten teachers to use with their kids.
“Making them only lasted a few years,” he says with a laugh. “I was working harder at puppets than at teaching.”
Nagy was a principal for 22 years at Father Hennepin, St. Patrick’s and Mary Ward Catholic elementary schools in Niagara Falls.
He has sent his paintings to health centres, doctors and nurses and first responders all across Ontario.
Premier Doug Ford received a painting of a trillium; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s was a red rose.
Each time he sends one he attaches a little note that goes something like: “I’m sending you this card to thank you for your hard work, plus I wish you would share this with your brave workers that are going through this pandemic.
“Together, we will see the end of it.”
Geoff Straw, a counsellor at Hospice Niagara, says he can understand how painting, and then sharing his work, helps Nagy through the loss of his wife.
“This is something he can create, that he can give back,” he says. “It’s part of what keeps him resilient.”
Says Nagy, “You feel like you’re helping, you know what I mean? It’s one small way of doing something.”
He is making three or four paintings every day and sending them out.
Just don’t ask him about the postage.
“Oh, don’t say that,” Nagy says with a laugh, wincing. “It costs me a lot of money. But that doesn’t matter.”
He assembles the packages at his table, the paintings, letters, envelopes and stamps all spread out in front of him.
“One time, I get to the last few cards and I say, ‘Dammit, where are my stamps?’ And I’d sealed all the envelopes.”
One of the cards went to Nagy’s doctor, who called him a few days later. Thanks for the beautiful card, he said, “but what are the stamps for?”