0.39 Dick wray, b. 1933

Trying to decide

I was born in 1933 in the Heights Hospital, and I was educated for the most part here [in Houston]. High school, the University of Houston School of Architecture…in the army a couple of years. Then in 1958 I went to Europe and spent two years in Europe trying to decide whether I wanted to be an architect or an artist. By the time I came back in 1959, I knew I was going to be an artist. I didn’t feel like I wanted to sit in an architect’s office and do that kind of work, so I started painting.

In 1959 I entered some silly show at the Beaumont Art Museum and won second prize or something. In those days they had those kinds of shows with first prize, second prize, that bullshit stuff. And then I have shown every single year since 1959, no exception, to the present date. I have not missed one year. My bio’s every damn year.

On sweeney and the museum of fine arts

The Museum had a show—James Sweeney came into town and he got rid of that local show—he put together the Ford Foundation-backed show called the Southwestern Painting and Sculpture Show.

Now Houston—the powers that be—didn’t particularly care for Mr. Sweeney because he didn’t kiss anybody’s ass and he didn’t go to meetings, and I mean he didn’t go to people’s houses to try to fundraise and stuff like that. He wasn’t too social and he went back to New York every other weekend. At the time he was probably the very top museum person in the United States, and he bought a painting of mine after the show was over with. It was up to those of us that were chosen to select what museum we were going to be showing at, and I chose the Albright Knox Museum in Buffalo, New York, because of their strong collection of Clyfford Still’s work, and also I liked Gordon Bunshaft, who was one of the designers for Skidmore and Merrill that had recently built an addition onto the [Albright Knox] museum. And Sweeney sort of suggested, well, you give that to Albright Knox and we will buy one for our collection. So Sweeney actually purchased a painting from my studio.

He would call me up and come over to my studio that didn’t have air conditioning in those days. And he wore a three-piece suit, always, always. Never saw him without a three-piece suit on. Never saw him without his coat on. He didn’t take his coat off when he came to my studio. And he would come over there in like August, and the poor guy would just sweat. He would rather come over and hang around with artists in their studio…and I was real flattered because he chose someone like me to hang around with.