Artist, muralist, builder, mischief-maker, colorist, and community creator, Graham is forever linked to mid-century, Monterey-based luminaries including John Steinbeck, Ed Ricketts, Joseph Campbell, John Cage, Edward Weston, and his own first wife, Judith Deim. Graham received a full scholarship to study art at Washington University in St. Louis, but his drive to paint in an “unacceptable” Modernist style and his parents’ disapproval of his career choice led him to move to California during the Great Depression. Later, when he gained financial success from a WPA mural project, he purchased land in Monterey and built his dream: an artists’ colony called Huckleberry Hill where his talented friends could all live, work and share. Graham’s prized “Pictographs” were an elegant fusion of grids and color glyphs suggesting an ancient, tactile language.