Gray grew up in a house on the sand dunes of Moss Landing, California, a small fishing village on Monterey Bay. Paula showed two aptitudes from an early age – a winning way with animals, and an ability to draw. She’s been drawing portraits of people and animals as long as she can remember. Her artwork drew the attention of a syndicated cartoonist who suggested she apply to the Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles, where she was accepted and received her BFA in Fine Arts. While attending Chouinard, she went to work for Walter E. Disney Enterprises, fabricating attractions for Disneyland and Walt Disney World. She later attended graduate school at UCLA and received a Master’s Degree in environmental design. But instead of plunging into L.A.’s art or design world, she went back to the country, this time to Flagstaff, Arizona, where she served as a curator for the Museum of Northern Arizona. While there she was influenced by her exposure to the Hopi and Navajo people and their art, especially their sense of design and the way they abstracted natural forms in their pottery, paintings and weavings. After three years, she returned to Los Angeles and worked for the Citywide Mural Project, supervising the creation of thirty murals around the city. She also got to indulge her longtime love of cartooning as an illustrator for the Constitutional Rights Foundation, writing and illustrating comic books and film strips. In addition, she has worked as a fashion photographer, book illustrator, public school art teacher, and a freelance graphic artist. In 1980, Paula moved back to northern California, began teaching art to youngsters and adults in Mendocino County and built her own house in Yorkville. She has remained committed to her own art practice, participating in over 100 exhibitions over the course of her career.

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