Born in 1933 in Houston, Texas, Dick Wray has developed a large and respected body of painted and mixed media works. Wray took free art lessons at the Museum of Fine Arts in his early teens, graduated from Lamar High School and, following military service in the U. S. Army from 1953 to 1955, he studied at the University of Houston's School of Architecture from 1955 to 1958, and later in 1958 he finished his studies at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf, Germany. Wray took off for Europe in 1958 to discover for himself the center of the art world, starting his journey in Paris. The two years spent in Europe laid the foundation for his painting career. Inspired by the art of the abstract expressionists, the work of the artists of the CoBrA group and the New York Abstract Expressionists – which he saw for the first time in Europe – Wray returned to Houston at age 26 knowing for certain that he wanted to be an artist, not an architect. Wray has a relentless list of exhibition credits dating from his participation in the Special Presentations and Lectures series at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in 1961. Highlights from his group exhibitions include the exhibition Homage to Lithography at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1969, the Texas Today exhibition at the Fort Worth Art Museum in 1977 and the Artist's Eye at the Kimball Museum also in Fort Worth in 1985. Solo exhibitions include the 1977 Paintings and Drawings at the Lerner-Heller Gallery in New York City, the 1986 Dick Wray Monoprints exhibition at the Galveston Arts Center and the Texas Artist of the Year- 2000 exhibition sponsored by the Art League Houston. Wray's work has been honored with a National Endowment for the Arts Artists Grant and has been included in the permanent collections of such institutions as the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, New York, the Palm Springs Desert Museum in Palm Springs, California, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Witte Memorial Museum of San Antonio and the Barrett Collection in Dallas, Texas.