DRAY

Dray - Bio

Born in Los Angeles, CA, Dray is an internationally known artist specializing in contemporary fine art.

Dray's intense passion for the arts was recognized from early childhood. At age seven, he was encouraged by his teachers

to enroll in the Barnsdall Park Art School in Los Feliz, California. Later he would focus his talents on drafting and

architecture before finally settling into an altogether different field of art - working as a recording engineer and musician.

By 1991, however, Dray returned to the visual arts. Concentrating his time and effort on investigating different forms of expression to

find the one that would carry his artistic voice best.

Working with a wide variety of mediums including acrylics, oils, oil pastels, color pencils and collages. Dray spent the early years

of his career studying the art of portraiture.

Influenced by artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Dray is also inspired by his continuing strong connection to both

cubism and graffiti art. These influences proved to be the segue that brought him out of portraiture painting and into a more investigative field of expression.

Dray began to focus even more on just visual arts when he moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas at the turn of the century. This move

marked Dray's decision to devote all of his time to developing his artistic vision. While living in Las Vegas he has been one of the

key players in creating an art scene in Las Vegas. He turned his studio in the downtown arts district into a dynamic place for

artists to work and exhibit. Between the years 2005 and 2007 he served on the First Friday Advisory Committee, a 15-member board that plans

and implements First Friday, downtown Las Vegas's monthly event that draws as many as 10,000 visitors at a time to the Arts District in Las vegas.

In 2005, Dray was selected to participate in a key project for the City of 100 Murals - the largest public art initiative ever undertaken in Las Vegas.

Dray worked with over 300 local fourth-graders who helped design a sound wall mural that now decorates a stretch of Interstate-95 and

celebrates both the city's 100th birthday and the Las Vegas Springs Preserve.

This experience in working with young people is one of the

many factors that inspired him to travel to Sri Lanka in 2006 and was welcomed by the former Prime Minister of Sri Lanka's daughter Sunethra Bandaranaike


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to support the work of the Sunera Foundation. - a Sri Lankan charity dedicated to fostering the creative vision of young

Sri Lankans with a disability. For two months Dray resided in this small country just south of India in preparation for an exhibition

at Bay Leaf Restaurant in Columbo 7, Sri Lanka sponsored by the Sunera Foundation and Triad Advertising in which all of the proceeds from

the exhibition went to disabled children and Tsunami victoms.

Dray is best known for his portraits of beautiful women and musical themed abstract canvases. His paintings have been collected in

varies regions of the world including Kenya, England, France, Japan, Germany, Singapore & Sri Lanka.  And also collected by several celebrities including Quincy Jones, Ice T, Coolio, Alanis Morissette,
KRS-One and others.