Panel of Heavyweights Deciphers Dick Wray’s Art and Life at Deborah Colton Gallery
Deborah Colton Gallery’s exhibition Dick Wray: Paintings kicks off with a Preview Party and Panel Discussion Thursday May 4, 6-7:30 pm. Public Opening Reception is Saturday May 6, 6-8 pm. Dick Wray: Paintings will be exhibited until July 29, 2023.
You are invited Thursday, May 4th for a Preview Reception of the grand solo exhibition, Dick Wray: Paintings, and for a Panel Discussion on the artist, his life and his works. The evening will begin with refreshments and a walk through the exhibition with gallery owner, Deborah Colton and the Panelist at 6:00 pm. The Panel will begin at 6:30 pm.
Panelists include Catherine D. Anspon, Pete Gershon and Earl Weed. The moderator will be Deborah Colton.
A native Houstonian born in 1933, Dick Wray, was an artist of incomparable talent and personality who played a critical role in the development of Houston’s contemporary art scene since the late 1950s. Often categorized as an Abstract Expressionist, Wray is best known for his explosive and dynamic paintings that have received numerous accolades from Houston’s critical community as well as notable arts figures across the United States throughout his career. His works have been collected and exhibited by museums and fine collections both nationally and internationally.
Panelists
Since 1998, Catherine D. Anspon has covered Texas’ art scene for PaperCity, where she is currently Executive Editor, based in Houston. Her byline has also appeared in Artnews as Houston correspondent, Art & Antiques, Spot, Glasstire, Artdesk, and Cultured. With a master’s in art history from the University of Missouri and a B.A. in History/Art History from Rice University, this Pittsburgh native has guest curated for Houston nonprofits FotoFest and Houston Center for Photography, the Contemporary at Blue Star in San Antonio, and Deborah Colton Gallery’s Plastic Fantastic in 2012 and A Time for Change in 2008. She is the author of Texas Artists Today (Marquand Books, 2010). A second volume of Texas Artists Today, benefiting Art League Houston, is in production, with an anticipated publication date of Fall 2024.
Pete Gershon is a writer, researcher, and curator of programs at the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art. He’s the author of Collision: The Contemporary Art Scene in Houston, 1972-1985 (Texas A&M Press, 2018) and Painting the Town Orange: The Stories Behind Houston’s Visionary Art Environments (Arcadia Press, 2015) and recently compiled Impractical Spaces: Houston, an anthology of profiles of artist-run venues. Previously, Pete Gershon has worked with the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Nameless Sound, and was the Founding Publisher and Editor of “Signal to Noise: The journal of improvised and experimental music” from 1997 to 2013.
Earl Weed has a degree in Music Theory from the University of North Texas, a law degree from SMU, studied art history with David Brauer at the Glassell School, and creative writing at Rice University. He met Dick Wray in 1995 and began collecting his art from that time until Dick Wray’s death in 2011. In 2006, Earl published a biography on Dick Wray in Langdon Review of the Arts. He has also written several catalogue essays for solo exhibitions of Dick Wray’s, and recently wrote a six-page feature on Dick Wray and his work for Art & Antiques’ April 2023 nationally and internationally distributed issue. Earl has a particular interest in the intersection of visual arts and music and was one of the patrons of Dick Wray that supported him in the last years of his life.
Dick Wray biography
Dick Wray attended the University of Houston’s School of Architecture, followed by being educated at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf Arts Academy in Germany. Returning to Houston in 1959, he began seriously working as an artist with zest and vigor. Over the next fifty years, he participated in a large number of important exhibitions nationally and internationally, while locally Wray had his first solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in 1975, was included in the Fresh Paint: The Houston School at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1985 and many other prestigious exhibitions. Wray was an instructor at the Glassell School of Art from 1968 until 1982 and also taught seminars in other art institutions throughout the years. Wray was awarded the Ford Foundation Award in 1962, received a prestigious Artist’s Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1978 and was named Texas Artist of the Year by the Art League of Houston in 2000. His work is in major collections, including the Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
“A dynamic and passionate artist who never followed the crowd and thought of himself as different from the more regional Texas artist, Wray was greatly influenced by his time living and studying in Europe. Dick Wray has revealed his strength as a world-class artist through his bold, well executed creations of forms, rich colors, textures and expression. It is our honor to show a sampling of this artist’s paintings and mixed media collage paintings to a national and international audience through this important exhibition.” – Deborah M. Colton
“If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing.” – Dick Wray
For more information, please visit https://www.deborahcoltongallery.com/