ABOUT THE ARTIST
Barbara C. (Manchester) Gray, who usually signs her work "BCGray", is an American painter whose work has been featured in magazines, including on the cover. "My painting is continually evolving. I don't paint in any one set way or fashion which I think is limiting oneself artistically. I am constantly learning and pushing myself to explore something new, which I think is the way one grows as a painter, as an artist."
Barbara has been involved in art since her childhood, distinguishing herself early as artistically gifted. Graduating from high school in 1970 her classmates voted her Most Artistic. While friends earned spending money babysitting and mowing lawns, Barbara was accepting commissions to do portraits and handpainted signs for area restaurants and businesses; she had her work in shows and was selling her still-lifes and landscapes. Later she studied Fine Art at Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.
"I am happy to be an artist. I live in a beautiful quiet place. My husband and I built our home together - a sanctuary of beauty and peace, of kindness and love. I paint what is around me, both here in New Hampshire and at my home on the coast.
"How do I work? I do a lot of small pencil sketches. Later, I'll select a sketch that I best like for its composition and potential for color and texture. Then I'll paint small studies in oils - like Monet with his haystacks and Japanese bridge. It's in the studies that I strive to work out color - getting the color right is something I constantly struggle with. The study that I most like will become a larger painting."
Barbara graduated university magna cum laude and is currently working on her master's degree at a university in Maine.
Originally from the coast of Rhode Island, she now resides in New Hampshire overlooking a pristine lake where her family includes her husband, son, and his fiance. She keeps an organic vegetable garden and several varieties of herbs in a kitchen garden, sharing its bounty with family and friends, putting up jams and relishes and sundried tomatoes to open at the supper table in the depths of winter when darkness draws an early close to the day and outside the New Hampshire nights are cold and long.
In addition to painting and gardening, Barbara plays the Celtic Harp, piano, and classical guitar. The family includes a small flock of much-loved and completely spoiled hens, Buff Orpingtons, which not only provide wonderful gifts of fresh organic eggs for family and friends, but also, along with her garden and sunflowers and daylilies, routinely make their way into her paintings.
Barbara paints mostly on commission with works ranging in price from $150 for her smallest works to $2500 and up for works 36x36 and larger.
Barbara (center) with her sister and father in 1955, copyright BCGray 2011
When asked about her work, Barbara replies, "My work is about color and about paint. It's about shapes and the beauty of negative space. I strive to put paint together in a way that delights the senses through the unexpected use of color."
People are often unreasonable,
irrational, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere
people may deceive you;
Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating
others could destroy overnight;
Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness,
some may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today,
will often be forgotten.
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis,
it is between you and God;
It was never between you
and them anyway.
- Mother Teresa
