Jerry Wray

Geraldine Smitherman Wray, known as Jerry Wray (born 1925), is an abstract artist based in her native Shreveport, Louisiana. She is considered a pioneer of modern art with a Christian perspective.

Wray graduated in 1942 from C.E. Byrd High School in Shreveport and was named in 2010 into the Byrd High Fall of Fame. She obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the former H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, then part of Tulane University in New Orleans. A leading figure in the Shreveport arts community, Wray participates in workshops and conducts weekly art classes in her studio. In 1943, she began working in watercolor at Newcomb. Her senior project there was selected to represent the college in a student exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. it was thereafter used as a teaching tool at Newcomb. In addition to watercolor, Wray works in a combination of inks, acrylics, and collage.
Wray formerly painted landscapes, particularly the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, where she and her husband Geroge usually visited for two weeks a year. "I’d have a North Carolina attack, I’d call it. George and I would go to North Carolina for about two weeks, rent a car in Asheville, and drive around out in the mountains. We’d find a spot and sit down to have a picnic. George would read his magazines, and I would paint whatever it was we'd found."
"Then my idea began to change about landscape. I couldn’t really express what I wanted to. I wanted to show what God means to me. And in my eyes, that was best shown through the abstract." She explains it differently but eloquently in her book, Jerry Wray:Pioneer Artgist of the South: "As the years passed, I turned more and more to the inner landscape of the soul." .

Since 1980, she has won more than forty awards in refereed exhibits. She had twenty-eight shows between 1995 and 2010. From 1999-2010, she has had twenty one-person shows. Her paintings have been shown throughout the nation and in the Virgin Islands. Private collectors and threel Fortune 500 companies have purchased her paintings. A firm in Germany purchased some of her originals and has published and distributed limited editions worldwide. In 1996, Wray was elected to the National Association of Women Artists. In 1999, she garnered the "Showcase Award" from Manhattan Arts Magazine'. Her paintings are displayed in seven galleries and seven museums worldwide, including the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum and the Meadows Museum at Centenary College in Shreveport.Louisiana Watercolor Society, and the National Watercolor Society.

Wray is the widow of George Wray, Jr., who took a special interest in her art work. The Wray family owned a Ford automobile dealership, later Wray-Dickinson, and in 1955 launched KTBS-TV, a former NBC outlet and since 1961 the ABC affiliate in Shreveport. She is the mother of four children.

Her 2009 book Jerry Wray: Pioneer Artist of the South is published by Sarah Hudson-Pierce's Ritz Publications in Shreveport.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu