Fern Gary was born in Dallas, Texas in 1893. At age 10 she won first prize in a school drawing contest at the Texas State Fair and at 16 a national design contest. After the early death of both parents, she dropped out of high school to care for her younger siblings. Although she attended the College of Industrial Arts in Dallas, she could not receive a degree because she had no high school diploma. Largely self-taught, she moved to California in the early 20s and gravitated to the group of plein-air painters working in Laguna Beach. She became friends with several of them and traded paintings with Edgar Payne and Frank Cuprien. She also collected paintings of Anna Hills, Carl Rungius and William A. Harper. Many summers she rented out her Laguna Beach home and camped in the Sierras to help make ends meet. During the darkest years of the depression, she was actively involved in the development of the Festival of Arts. Frequent subjects for her paintings were the breaking waves on Laguna cliffs, mission scenes from San Juan Capistrano, floral still lifes, eucalyptus groves and Newport Harbor. Several small reproductions of her paintings were sold in Los Angeles department stores. One popular image was “The Fish Market” which showed fishermen selling their catch, their wooden boats pulled up onto the sand at Newport Beach.Fern Gary married sculptor Clifton Warner in the early 50s. They travelled extensively in the Southwest, providing her with new subject matter and inspiration for her plein-air painting. Fern Gary died in 1979.Fern Gary was curator of the Laguna Beach Art Gallery during the 1930s and 1940s. Exhibitions: Santa Cruz Art League, 1934; Oakland Art Gallery, 1937; Golden Gate International Exhibition (Part of the World Fair), 1939; Laguna Beach Art Association and International Festival of the Arts “Woman Painters of the West” 1941.