American artist, muralist, writer and arts educator, most famous for his mural work in California during the Great Depression where he earned commissions under the Public Works of Art Project and the Treasury Relief Art Project. He worked at Coit Tower painting murals with Ralph Stackpole, Bernard Zakheim, and Edith Hamlin (wife of Maynard Dixon). He also painted nine murals in the Modesto Post Office which was decommissioned and sold at auction in 2011. As well as creating public commissions, Boynton was a teacher at a several post-secondary institutions. Ray Scepter Boynton was born in Whitten, Iowa, on January 14, 1883. After graduating from high school at Strawberry Point, Iowa in 1901 he moved to Chicago in 1903 to attend the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (now known as School of the Art Institute of Chicago) from 1905 to 1907. He moved to the state of Washington for a brief period before moving to California in 1915 which was perhaps the most important artistic period of Ray Boynton's life. He moved to San Francisco in 1915, when hundreds upon hundreds works of art were located at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. He began broadening his artistic abilities by learning pastel and fresco. He got a job at the California School of Fine Arts in 1920, and in 1923 he was employed by the Department of Art of the University of California at Berkeley where he remained until he retired in 1948. Once on these faculties he began writing for local papers and magazines. He was a critic, a theorist, and editorialist. During this time he went to Mexico to study with Diego Rivera and also sought and procured many commissions both public and private. Boynton's fortunes varied through 1920s. He married Margaret (Peggy) Gough, a Canadian, in San Francisco in 1919 who died of tuberculosis in 1931. During her illness. Boynton sacrificed many painting hours to provide his semi-invalid wife with care. Early in the 1930s Boynton began venturing out to gold mining ghost towns of California and Nevada. These ghost towns were drawing people who were down on their luck and thought they could eke out a living finding left over gold flakes. Many of his drawings focus on Downieville. The drawings Boynton subsequently created were later exhibited a couple of times at U C Berkeley and Mills College. In 1936 Boynton was commissioned as the lead artist to paint thirteen murals in the Modesto, California Post Office known as El Veijo. Little is written about Ray Boynton after 1940. It is known he continued to work at U C Berkeley until June 1948. Once he retired, he and his third wife - Beryl Wynnyk Boynton - moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The last years of his life were spent in trekking through unfrequented areas of Mexico, New Mexico, and Arizona, accompanied by his artist wife, Beryl. The Boynton studio in Santa Fe, which he remodeled from an ancient adobe dwelling, was the center of these explorations. It has become one of the landmarks for artists and writers of the Southwest. Ray Boynton died from cancer September 26, 1951 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He had no children. After his death in 1951, the life and work of Ray Boynton continued to be studied. In 1976, during the 25th anniversary of Boynton's death, The Oakland Museum, with help from Mary Fabilli, put on an exhibition entitled Ray Boynton and the Mother Lode: The Depression Years. (Edited from bio on Wikipedia)