Gregory Gillespie
Born 1936, Roselle Park, NJ, died 2000, lived and worked in Belchertown, MA
Self-Portrait, Seated, 2000, oil on wood, Museum Purchase, 2001.54
Gregory Gillespie's paintings depict a reality that is well “beyond our senses.” While action painting, indicative of Abstract Expressionism, was still overwhelming the art world in the late-1950s, Gillespie sought a detailed, almost obsessive, realism that bordered on the surreal. Depicting every hair on a face, every crack on a wall, he created images that are intensely colored, and as a result, deeply psychological. Gillespie, whose paintings are almost always autobiographical, painted many self-portraits, and, like Rembrandt, captured his changing moods and aging person with honesty and poignancy. For instance, the bright blue walls of Self-Portrait, Seated highlight Gillespie's chest, as they simultaneously enclose and isolate his aging body. Gillespie’s Self-Portrait, Seated, is one of the last self-portraits completed by the artist before his untimely death in 2000.
