Artist and guest curator discussion, Thursday, September 3 at 5:30 PM Valton Murray is a self‑taught artist from Mesena, GA, whose vibrant paintings draw on early memories of sketching in the dirt outside his childhood home. Despite challenges with epilepsy and polio, he built a lifelong practice that has earned both statewide and national recognition, including selection by VSA for its international festival and exhibitions at The Kennedy Center. Known for his brightly colored, memory‑based scenes of family life and the rural South, Murray now moves into more abstract territory, creating dreamlike landscapes filled with imagined structures and intuitive, otherworldly forms.