Gray graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1952 and after a post-graduate scholarship, spent the next decade living and teaching in Fife and finally retiring from lecturing in 1990. He was an active member of the Royal Scottish Society of Watercolour Painters, serving on their council three times from 1974 to 1987. He won the May Marshall Brown Award at the RSW in 1984. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh City Gallery, Greenock Art Gallery, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and the National Trust for Scotland. Three of his paintings are in the private collection of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh.