Mount Pleasant Magazine March/April 2018

65 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.MountPleasant.Pet | www.MountPleasantBuilders.com feature Gray, who is well-known in the Charleston area for his colorful coastal landscapes, are not just masterpieces of the hand but also expressions from the heart, manifestations of the very soul of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Gray’s works fall into the style known as impressionism, born of an experiment undertaken in the summer of 1869 by two struggling young artists, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who attempted to capture the lively atmosphere around a small pond outside of Paris by painting the same outdoors scene simultaneously. This style, which sought to capture the transitory nature of light as it fell upon the water and its glimmer as it reflected off the faces of people along the bank, seemed absurd to some at the time, but today impressionism is the most popular style of painting. Gray got his own start a century later when, in the summer of 1969, a 10-year old lad, sketch pad and pencils in hand, set out across tobacco fields near his rural Marlboro County home in search of a suitable tobacco barn to draw. He found a barn that day – and his passion. And after years spent studying under such noted artists as Ilona Royce Smithkin and accumulating knowledge in the classrooms and museums of the world’s most- renowned art institutes, Gray followed his heart to return full-circle and paint what he knew best and loved most: his beloved South Carolina coastline. With reason. “I have a passion for painting,” Gray pointed out, “but, more importantly, I have a passion for the environments I paint.” Back home, Gray found not only fading architectural icons of the Old South but also a landscape full of richness, texture, color and variety that rivaled the beauty of any place he had ever traveled. And for the last 35 years, he has primarily dedicated himself to painting the incomparable South Carolina coastline, from Little River to Hilton Head, with very little in between left unexplored. And very few people unmoved. To see a Michael Gray painting of the South Carolina Lowcountry is to “L ife imitates art far more than art imitates life,” or so poet Oscar Wilde opined in 1894. And the debate as to which is more imitable continues yet. But as far as one Mount Pleasant artist is concerned, the answer is simple: Art is life. It only takes a glance to realize that the works of Michael By Gray Bostick Photos courtesy of Michael Gray. Art is Life Mount Pleasant’s Michael Gray