Ray did a two year teacher training course with a bias towards Art. He eventually became Head of Art at St Aidan's C of E High School.

While teaching, he painted and had exhibitions widely in the North, with 31 one-man shows and took part in numerous group shows. For a while, his cartoons were published in the Times Educational Supplement.

His paintings developed from being semi-abstract, based on aspects of landscape, to more figurative work including people.

When he had a son, he discovered children's picture books with their glorious story telling art and was hooked. After a few years of having his own picture stories continuously rejected by publishers, Yorkshire TV regularly used his illustrations, in national Schools TV programmes. Traditional and new stories, with his pictures, were read by well known actors.

Educational publishers also gave him work. He found an agent and left school teaching to work as a freelance illustrator and artist.

Notable jobs include a set of 24 books for Schofield & Sims, Educational publishers. Stories about motorcycling teenagers. He did 384 pen and ink illustrations.

And several 11ft long educational friezes, each with about 50 pictures, showing the history of Money, Windows, The Stock Exchange, Taxation, Electricity, Nuclear Energy and Water Supply for appropriate organisations like The Inland Revenue and The Stock Exchange.


Between 1975 and 2002, he illustrated 207 books for various publishers including, Collins, MacMillan, Ladybird, and Scholastic.
Rupert Bear, Paddington Bear, Noddy and Postman Pat are classic characters he has drawn.
Enter Ray Mutimer into Google and in Amazon - Books for more information.