our culture: ART
“Stove Your Head” Lucky Ned Pepper
Tray Witherspoon:
True Confessions of a Realist
By MEL W RHODES
S
90
ome of his earliest memories are
of art. When he was “little,” he
said, he copied everything his Uncle
Ricky drew. “Uncle Ricky could draw
anything,” Tray Witherspoon said, a
trace of awe still in his voice.
Witherspoon hails from the flatland
Panhandle town of Sudan.
He moved east to Weatherford
in 1980 at age 11 and gradu-
ated Weatherford High School
in 1989. Except for a seven-year
period when he lived and worked
in the Metroplex, he has lived in
Weatherford. He returned to Parker
County last year.
Though he has been drawing
and painting in various mediums his
entire life and considers himself an
artist, his day-job handle is “packag-
ing engineer.”
“I design corrugated boxes for
different companies, and displays,
make sure their stuff gets produced
right,” Witherspoon explained. “It’s a
strange world, the packaging indus-
try.”
The Story of a Meticulous Artist Living
in The ‘Strange World Of Packaging’