Gray

Painting The Blues: BB King's Universal City, Los Angeles

From Juke Joints To Sunday Service.
Gray's art is a look into a 3-dimensional world of Church House stained glass colors and rustic self-taught expression. His is a fresh look into the past, taking things old and forgotten, and breathing the visual color of life back into what seems a fading memory of southern culture.


On display at: BB KING'S Los Angeles
1000 Universal Dr. St. 222 Universal City, CA
818-622-5464

Gray Art: From Juke Joints To Sunday Service
Studio: 615.895.4878

Revival / Gray

Gray continues creating work rich in southern imagery. His new series of paintings are beautifully soulful and all share a common theme—reviving the south: looking to our southern past, painting it in the present, and preserving it for the future. Gray's art is a look into a 3-dimensional world of Church House stained glass colors and rustic self-taught expression. His is a fresh look into the past, taking things old and forgotten, and breathing the visual color of life back into what seems a fading memory of southern culture. Gray's work is like finding an old photo of your great grandmother long since lost and forgotten. Once you've found it and reconnected yourself to your own past, you treat it like a treasure to be handed down to the next generation, so that they, too, can know and have a connection to their own past history.




On display at:
BB KING'S Los Angeles
1000 Universal Dr. St. 222 Universal City, CA
818-622-5464

(Weaving Together Music And Art)
Gray was born and raised in (Snake Hollow) Paint Rock, Tennessee. In this place he developed a sense of curiosity, discovery and imagination which he still pursues through his art and music. His work is rich in southern imagery, for example, from his song Brushy Mountain, Gray painted a convict, transformed into a blackbird, flying away from the remote East Tennessee prison with the lyrics of the murder ballad written across the sky. Like all of Gray's work, it is rendered in acrylic house-paint -- in this case on the side piece of an old church pew. Gray's art has been featured in the Oxford American and Time Magazine. Also, The Complete Hank Williams boxed CD set, featuring Gray's art, won a Grammy Award for design. His newest music and art is evocative of his childhood in Paint Rock, Tennessee near the Smokey Mountains where he was reared by his grandparents on a small farm. "From an artistic point of view, I'm glad I went through that,"said Gray,describing an anachronistic life-style as a child where he and his family had no plumbing or running water. His recent paintings are of blackbirds, mules, and men cutting wood or curing tobacco, often with lyrics of his songs superimposed on the image. "Sometimes I'll paint a memory and write out what I remember from it," explained Gray. "You could call this 'folk tales or songs mixed with painting'." Gray's work is popular among Nashville musicians, but it has shown as far away as SoHo, New York and as nearby as the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville and the Country Music Hall Of Fame.

PATRONS/PUBLICATIONS:
Time Magazine, The Tennessee State Museum, Country Music Hall Of Fame, Writer/Director James mangold Walk The Line, Mercury Records (The Complete Hank Williams) 75th Cd Boxset, VH-1 Save The Music and Nashville River Stages, NBA ALL Star Pau Gasol Memphis Grizzlies, Martin Guitars,The Spencer Brownstone Gallery SoHo New York, The Oxford American Magazine, Raw Vision Magazine, Saturn/GM Car Corp, NBA FedX Forum Memphis,TN.

Gallery location: The Center For Southern Folklore
119 South Main Street Memphis, Tennessee Tele: 901.525.3655

I Live to create and create to live. A musican must make music, an artist must paint.


I do gallery shows and perform my music at the opening.

PATRONS/PUBLICATIONS:
Time Magazine, The Tennessee State Museum, Country Music Hall Of Fame, Writer/Director James mangold Walk The Line, Mercury Records (The Complete Hank Williams) 75th Cd Boxset, VH-1 Save The Music and Nashville River Stages, NBA ALL Star Pau Gasol Memphis Grizzlies, Martin Guitars, Gibson Guitars, Memphis Blues Ball, The Spencer Brownstone Gallery SoHo New York, Memphis Music & Heritage Festival Poster, The Oxford American Magazine, Raw Vision Magazine, Saturn/GM Car Corp, NBA FedX Forum Memphis,TN., BB King's, The Hallmark Channel.