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Don Gray http://www.jessieevans-dongray.com Mediums - acrylic, pastel, casein (opaque watercolor), oil, pencil Artist's Statement -Don Gray paints realistic still-lifes, landscapes, figures and self-portraits in acrylic, pastel, casein (opaque watercolor) and oil. Gray has always been committed to the reality of the world we see and live in, considering himself a poetic-realist painter. He feels that the common objects of the world -- apples, rocks, trees -- in addition to people, are not only beautiful in themselves, but resonate with deep feeling and spiritual presence. He feels there is a fundamental truth of life residing in these things of the world, not only in how they look, but in their density of form. Despite the realism of his work, he is less concerned with detailed, photographic, surface realism than with fundamental, rock-solid form, which he equates with the ultimate meaning of existence. Gray feels more of a connection with artists of the past whose art directly reflected the world and their experience of it. They used reality as a vehicle for the expression of timeless human emotions and aspirations, whereas many contemporary artists do not. This is one reason why he will place art books with paintings of such masters as Rembrandt, Rubens, Goya, Cezanne and Van Gogh as objects in his still-lifes. The books express the relationship he feels with these artists and his belief in their artistic philosophies, as well as using their images to enhance the beauty and symbolic meaning of his own still-life paintings. Like other introspective artists, Don Gray has painted and drawn a number of self-portraits in a variety of media. In many respects, he considers himself a draughtsman-painter, an artist very involved with drawing. Because of this and his love of color, pastels have loomed large in his work. While primarily a still-life painter, he has also worked extensively with landscape. Gallery Affiliations - unaffiliated Exhibitions - 1997 Deborah Hudgins Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ 1996 Deborah Hudgins Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ 1995 Roland Betts Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Sun Cities Art Museum, Sun City, AZ 1993 Steven Boone Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 1989 Western Images Gallery, New York City 1988 Midtown Galleries, New York City C.G. Rein Galleries, Scottsdale, AZ 1987 C.G. Rein Galleries, Santa Fe, NM Gregg Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ Silvermine Guild Arts Center, New Canaan, CT 1986 Giannetta Gallery, Philadelphia Art Students League, New York City Lincoln Center, New York City 1985 State University of New York, Oswego, NY Lincoln Center, New York City New York Institute of Technology, New York City 1984 State University of New York, New Paltz, NY Lincoln Center, New York City Summit Arts Center, Summit, NJ Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY 1983 Art Students League, New York City Arbitrage Gallery, New York City 1982 Pond Lane Gallery, Southampton, NY Parrish Museum, Southampton, NY Lever House, New York City Adelphi University, Garden City, NY Pace University, Briarcliff, NY 1981 Brooklyn Law School, Brooklyn, NY Adelphi University, Garden City, NY 1980 Art Students League, New York City Hammerquist Gallery, New York City Baruch College, New York City 1979 Peekskill Museum, Peekskill, NY New York Community College, Brooklyn, NY 1978 Manhattan Boro President's Offices, New York City Ingber Gallery, New York City 47 Bond Street Gallery, New York City 1977 Allan Stone Gallery, New York City (5 times, 1966-77) Ladycliff College, Highland Falls, NY 1976 Far Gallery, New York City 1974 Frank Rehn Gallery, New York City 1970 Rider College, Trenton, NJ Carus Gallery, New York City 1967 Simpson College, Indianola, IA 1966 Alfredo Valente Gallery, New York City Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI State University of New York, Potsdam, NY Galerie Achard DeSousa, New York City 1965 Vera Lazuk Gallery, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 1964 Purdue University, Lafayette, IN 1963 Drawings USA, St. Paul, MN |  |
Biography - He has an extensive record of exhibitions, and is represented in private and corporate collections. He is married to the well-known expressionist landscape painter, Jessie Benton Evans. Gray received his B.A. degree in art from Arizona State University; his M.A. degree in art from the University of Iowa. Born in California, but raised in Arizona (and now living there), Gray's extensive arts background is centered in New York City, where he lived for twenty-five years. A poet and art critic (examples of art essays and poems are on his website: jessieevans-dongray.com), as well as a painter, Gray wrote in New York for the New York Arts Journal, Times Herald-Record newspaper, Applause and Sunstorm magazines, and as Senior Editor of Art World. Living in Phoenix, Arizona for the past ten years, he was Visual Arts Editor of Ashes arts newspaper. In New York he produced and moderated "Artist and Critic," a program on art on Manhattan Cable Television, interviewing artists Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Alice Neel, Raphael Soyer, Isabel Bishop, critics Dore Ashton, John Canaday, Theodore Wolff, collector Robert Scull. Other programs included Monet at Giverny (with Metropolitan Museum of Art); Expressive Symbolism in Cezanne; Matisse; The Mechanization of Art: Effects of Technology on 20th Century Art; Rembrandt and Van Gogh: The Self-Portrait. About his paintings, Art News describes Gray's "passion and seriousness...extraordinary intensity of feeling, keen intelligence and a thorough knowledge of art past and present...His works have a riveting immediacy yet function on a symbolic level as well. Although the concept of the 'masterpiece' seems to have gone out of style, this is a word that constantly comes to mind in confronting Gray's major works." The Christian Science Monitor says, "This...is the kind of picture earlier artists produced to establish their right to be called 'master.'" The New York Times States, "The compelling intensity of Don Gray's figures makes an immediate, striking impression, and these paintings have a tendency to dominate the gallery." The Philadelphia Inquirer says, "These emphatic works feature a greater virtuosity in paint handling than we commonly see today." Author Kurt Vonnegut writes: "I was so stimulated and beguiled by what Don Gray said on television that I declared myself a fan of his...a lot of what he said, being so fundamental, was applicable to arts in general, including my own, which is writing. He is obsessed by the actual content of works of art, as contrasted with technical advances they may represent, and so am I. He is an able and moving painter...He can draw. It shows. He has ideas. They show. {Gray is) an admirable painter who can speak with more clarity about the actual content and effects of art than any critic I know." |