“Transmutations”, by David P. Gray

When I was a boy in the 50’s, my parents sold everything they owned and moved to a small town on a lake in Jalisco, Mexico to live until the money ran out. I can say that that experience made a lasting impression on my art, my life style, and me. I was only seven years old when the Priest came to my dirt-floored school, to take us to the big Cathedral with all the strange smells, candles, and bizarre statues. It was Ash Wednesday, and for a little Presbyterian boy from the suburbs of Knossville TN., this really was voodoo. At the same time as the Church spooked me, the Indians would come down from the mountains north of town wearing feather costumes. They would eat the sacred peyote buttons, and dance in the street in front of the Church day and night for three days. Some where in the spiraling sound of the indigenous flutes, drums and dancing feet; I lost myself. It was as if my eyes had been opened on a cosmic vortex to a new world, which was there all the time. I feel that in everyone’s life there are these moments of enlightenment; that feeling of oneness. It maybe just the way the sun light reflects off on breeze blown puddle of water, forming a dancing light show on the ceiling, or the spark in a new babies eye. The world we see is but the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to understanding our true meaning. Everything we see, may very well be a symbol for some thing far greater, something unfathomable in our four dimensional world. Yet for just that moment of grace, that second in time, out of the corner of our eye, we can see and feel the oneness with the entire divine picture. The miracle is all around us, and we are part of it.
In my work there are many references to the Catholic Church and it’s people, and rituals. I’m not pushing Christianity of any kind, but using it as point of departure for the feelings I got as a youth and latter as an adult when I returned many times. It is this very moment that I strive to define in my art and share with others.
This series of work is the natural extension of my paintings and photographs of the last thirty years; the bringing together of “?Donde Esta El Senior?”, “Where is God?”, series of paintings and photographs, with the earlier, “There’s a hole in the Universe, and I think I found It”, series of paintings and watercolors.


David P. Gray
Born; April 16, 1952
Atlanta, Ga., U.S.A.
Education: University of Houston Graduate Fine Arts Program 1979-1981
University of St. Thomas B.A. 1975.
South Texas Junior College 1971-1973.
Professional
Experience: Instructor of Photography, Painting, and Fundamentals of Art and Design
University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX. 1976-1985.
Instructor of Computer Graphics as Fine Art , Tomball College, Tomball TX. 1994