Classically trained artist and scholar Graydon Parrish attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts prior to obtaining a Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Andy Warhol’s The New York Academy of Art and a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College in Massachusetts. Deeply versed in a technique that fuses classical and contemporary realism, Graydon Parrish also spent years as an apprentice of Michael Aviano, a highly regarded authority in the field. Currently a working artist in Austin, Texas, and an Instructor at the Grand Central Academy of Art, Graydon Parrish’s pieces remains a favorite of art collectors including Diane Sawyer and Michael Huffington. Outside of his role as an artist and instructor, Graydon Parrish regularly obtains positions in research and academia. Dedicated to the history of his craft, Graydon Parrish has held a variety of roles in the field, with recent positions as an art historian and a co-author for a catalogue raisonee on Charles Bargue and the Jean-Léon Gérôme catalogue raisoneé. He also contributed editing and research efforts to Charles Bargue and Jean Leon-Gerome: Drawing Course, a book that details noted techniques in the art realm. Outside of many active posts in the art world, Graydon Parrish strives to support means of cultural expression through donations to groups including the Houston Grand Opera, the Austin Lyric Opera, the ZACH Theater, and the Tyler Museum of Art. Graydon Parrish’s most noted allegorical pieces, “Remorse, Despondence and the Acceptance of an Early Death” and “The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy” may be viewed at the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts and the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut, respectively.