Local Artist, Paul Murray, has donated the use of two pieces of his artwork to promote awareness and encourage donations to the Smoky Mountain Children’s Home. The sketch entitled Hideaway and the watercolor entitled Troubl’ Darlin’ will become the new “faces” of the SMCH. These images will be seen in all of the new promotional material for “The Home.”

Paul Murray, Canadian native, was always preoccupied with the study of his art. At the age of 10, Paul didn't find it hard to skip school and walk 12 miles to visit his old hermit friends Joey and his siblings. Murray was already displaying his work at local art shows, where his paintings and commissions sold.

At age 13, he quit school and dedicated himself to preserving these rare people. When Paul wasn't on his friend's homestead learning to make tools by hand and live off the land; he was in the library learning the techniques of the masters. Some of those he studied were Rembrandt, Wyeth and Rockwell.

Most artists work in one medium only, but Murray has various mediums; pencil, pastel, egg tempera, oil and watercolor. He read all that he could on the elusive and eclectic mountain people of Appalachia. He had been visiting theses areas, since an early age and the mountains and its people intrigued him deeply. Here he recognized the unique purity of such deep isolation, the hard struggle to survive, the pride and hundreds of years of knowledge kept alive in this hard place.

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