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107 McHenry Ave. Modesto CA. 95354 (209)524-4621
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MODESTO'S QUIET VILLAGE
Check out the EVENTS
button above to see
Minnie's event
calendar for live band
dates, reunions, and
parties!
Minnie's Restaurant features carvings and artwork throughout, most notably a large
number of beautiful oil and black velvet paintings by the artist Tyree.  The owners of Minnie's
are interested in trading with other owners of Tyree paintings featuring animals.  Below is a
biography of the Artist Tyree:
(Ralph) Burke Tyree was born June 30, 1921 in Irving, Kentucky.  
He had two sisters and five brothers and was the seventh of eight
children born to Sally Turpin and Charles Green Tyree.  The Tyree
family moved to Delhi, California while he was an infant.

He attended Livingston High School, but transferred to Turlock High
for his last two years since they offered more art instruction.  He
graduated high school in 1939.  He met his future wife, Marguerite
(Margo) Almeida, in high school and was awarded a scholarship to
the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland for a portrait he
painted of her.  He studied art there and later at the San Francisco
School of Fine Arts.
In his late teens, Burke stowed away on a Greek freighter that was sailing from San Francisco
to Japan.  When the crew discovered him hiding on the ship, he was put to work in the rat-
infested boiler room, shoveling coal into the furnace.  When the ship docked, he was able to
spend some time exploring Japan then returned to San Francisco on the same ship.

In January 1942, Burke Tyee joined the U.S. Marines, and was sent to the South Pacific where
he was stationed in American Samoa.  His military duties included accompanying the
observation planes in reconnaissance flights over the islands and preparing topographic maps to
illustrate areas of military activity.  He was under the direct command of General Price as a
personal orderly, and his projects included creating murals in the officers’ quarters, illustrating
menus, painting portraits, and anything else the general wanted in the way of artwork.  During
this time he painted primarily on canvas.

He was transferred to Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California shortly before the end of World
War II.  Burke had corresponded with Margo during his stay in the Pacific, and they were
married in June 1945.  He was discharged from the service in January 1946.  Burke and Margo
had seven children, six boys and a girl, born between 1946 and 1964.  They moved often, living
in various parts of California and on the islands of Guam, Maui, Oahu, and Hawaii.

After serving in the military, Burke Tyree worked as a self-employed artist and began showing
his work in galleries in the Hawaiian Islands, Oakland and San Francisco.  His art was inspired by
the islands he visited while in the service, and he returned to the South Pacific many times,
photographing subjects for his work.  He painted a variety of Polynesian subjects, including
beautiful nudes, flowers, and character portraits.

In the 1950’s Burke Tyree began to feel that his subject matter would be enhanced by
representation on velvet, and he was soon painting exclusively on velvet.  He licked the depth
he could achieve with the velvet rather than canvas which, in contrast, is a flat fabric.  He
experimented with his own paint formulation and adopted a rare, centuries-old technique of
applying thin layers of color (ground in a varnish emulsion) over a period of time, gradually
painting the velvet nap from the backing to the surface.  This in-depth technique enhanced the
three dimensional aspect of his paintings.  He strived to create a lifelike, realistic representation
of his subjects while keeping the velvet soft and touchable.

In the 1970’s his interest in birds and animals, particularly endangered species, led him to
expand this subject matter to include a wide variety of animal life.  He felt the texture of velvet
was closer than that of canvas to the texture of natural things, such as the fur and feathers of
animals and birds that were soft to the touch like velvet.

Burke Tyree died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack on January 15, 1979 in Crows
Landing, California as he was preparing to leave for an art show.  He was 57 years old.


Anyone interested in trading their animal paintings by Tyree
please call Stuart Mah at (209) 524-4621