When I was 7 years old, my parents enrolled me in the High Museum of Art's children's class. The only prize I've ever won was $5 for a picture I painted there. I kept the bill in a special envelope in my mother's desk. Then one day she "borrowed" it in a pinch. I was crushed. She re-paid me, but I didn't want just any five dollar bill; that one was my trophy. At home I had an inverted-V easel and friends came home with me to paint after school. That, softball and riding Flexie racers was pure fun!

My pictures during the intervening years of high school lost the spontaneity of a child and became predictable images of a teenage girl. So here I skip a few years of drawing ladies in high heels and horses which I had probably never even seen in Atlanta. When I was seventeen I moved to Athens and the University's Art Department. One of the first classes newcomers took was called Art in the Dark, where every day we beginning art students drew in a dark room, producing piles of "drawings" on newsprint paper using big chunks of black charcoal and producing shapes and marks in varying values of black. Those undergraduate years were some of the best years of my life because of our wonderful art faculty (Joe Schwartz, Leonard DeLonga, Howard Thomas, Charlie Morgan, Lamar Dodd) and the new art friends I was meeting. Most of our subjects were clothed models, still lifes, and landscapes painted from the second story balcony out back. We worked deep into the nights while listening to the new Bob Dylan, who was met with shock as we all stood drop-jawed in the studio on hearing this new sound. I still remember Lamar Dodd setting up the still life of my first successful painting. He liked it. Those were happy years that I believe cemented my desire to be a painter.

I moved to New York after graduating. There I worked at B. Altmans in the import department drawing pictures for buyers to send to the Far East. When I returned to Athens 3 years later, and now married, went back to the University's graduate school and a new faculty who wanted abstract paintings. Not good for me. My paintings have always been very realistic and painterly. They hated them. Then came 10 years of decorative painting. Next we started a paper where I illustrated stories and drew cartoons. These many years later, I have recently painted at the Lyndon House with Charles Warnock's class, designed for beginners, but there I've received some of the most valuable criticism ever, especially after many years of painting alone in my studio without valuable feed-back. My paintings have taken a marked change, primarily in color.

Rather than entering shows, most of my paintings in the last 10 years have been shown at my home. While the shows (and the accompanying parties) have been successful and well-attended, I am delighted to now belong to the Studio Group and to be beginning a new chapter in my life as a painter in Athens.

Email: chathammurray@charter.net
Web: chathammurray.com

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