Just before graduating from high school  I enlisted the Navy (1945-46). Tha GI Bill gave me a year of college followed by years of art schools. Washburn University, Kansas City Institute of Art, The  Ringling School of Art, Sarasota, FL where I ran out of GI bill  so I went to work at a hometown (Topeka, KS) ad agency as an art director/illustrator for 6 months until up popped the Korean Thing. Back in the Navy for a couple more years (1950-52)..which fortunately included more GI Bill. With my goal at that time of becoming an illustrator I enrolled in the Famous Artists correspondence course while still in the Navy as a Draftman/Illustrator 3rd Class at Navy Traing Aids 

Went directly from the Navy to California in 1952 and started in graphics once again as an art director for sevsral years.  With my restored GI Bill I went back to school at Art Center in LA as well as Chouinard School of Art and a couple semesters at UCLA. Opened my very successful graphics studio in LA 1954 to 1969.  I flew at every opportunity… commercial license… instrument rating …flew a childhood dream from LA to NY (right over the St Joseph airport where it all began)… multiengine rating in a friend’s twin engine …joined an aerobatic biplane club…flew in an International Aerobatics Club competition in the photo above…what a life!!!

After years of graphics and illustration and a bleeding ulcer I was introduced to and encouraged by a very successful painter in Carmel.  I made a big choice. At the end of 1969 sold the beautiful ‘Pasadena house on the hill,  shut down the lucrative studio in LA  and  moved to Carmel Valley, CA where I unpacked a brand new easel, read Mayers Handbook for the Artist, and started to paint with oils!

After a time my work was being shown in Carmel at the Gallery Americana and later at Zantman’s Gallery. A year or so and later I opened the Ron Grauer Gallery in Carmel. The following seven years with the gallery were very educational, interesting years. It was a good time…it was a bad time… it was not the time to be in the art business in Carmel during the Nixonian recession, late 70’s. I made a judicious decision and I bailed out of the gallery business, joined up with a really sharp ad guy fresh from a LA/NY /London agency and we started the first 4A advertising agency in Monterey County (4A’s a big deal in the ad-world ).

As CEO at the agency the money flowed very well…we had a lot of fun… won lots of awards…but it wasn’t the art I longed to return to... sold my shares of the business to my wonderful partner. Divorced that year…remarried… divorced again ‘87. Those were tough years for all of us…lots of tears, lots of joy. Continued to paint but never really settled down…met some great, beauriful and wonderful people who added much to the tapestry of my life.

In 1995, leukemia grounded me…no more playing in the air. A noisy plane will always propel me outside to have a look … aviation always played a big part in my earlier life. Today, painting and drawing is my only reason for being … and that’s really thanks to drawing those airplanes way back then …I flew a a large circle back to the beginning...airplanes to art to airplanes and back to art.

Born in 1927, and having lived and painted on the California central coast since 1970, you can figure I’m no 'Pollo de la Primavera'. However, during a 1995 Charles Movalli workshop (Charles is a wonderful guy, and a wonderfl painter, teacher and writer), there appeared a lovely, talented artist and I married her before she could get away. Lois Johnson…a soulmate! My good fortune and excellent timing because Loii nursed me thru several years of chemo and hospitals ( she still looks over me like a sexy mother hen). Life is even more wonderous and still never ceases to thrill me as I grow older and older and even older. My painting is more fun, more personal and honest… hopefully better. At last, I’ve settled down…unless we  decide to move to France or Mexico. There must always be room for one more adventure.

EVENTS
My most recent work has been painting an assortment of figurative descriptions of musicians, singers, dancers. The ballet, Scheherazade first got my attention because of the gorgeous music, but then I became enamored with ballet itself which led me in the direction I'm headed at the moment. The ballet is beautiful and I did pen drawings from videos and researched ancient Persian records for background material. There are a few of  Scherezade and some of the newer subjects remaining at the Garden Gallery, Half Moon Bay, CA. Having never painted these subjects before, I’d love to have your feedback on such work.

graurog@sbcglobal.net - 831.336.3641