“I had a student drive the piece from Seattle to Vancouver. He was held at the border for 3 hours because they thought he was smuggling art!”
-GJ Gillespie
Your five pieces in Mud Season Review are mixed-media collages. Talk about your creative process, the materials you use, and how your work comes together.
Because I started making art seriously later in life, I focused on collage because others have spent decades learning to master oil or acrylic painting. (Kind of hard to compete).
I want to get really good at using paper as a medium. I lay translucent tissue and lots of expressionist marks on the undercoat to create depth. My goal is to make a kind of future antique with a sense of history.
You say that “art should evoke connotations that permit the viewer to experience a sense of wonder, awe and new perspectives of being.” How do you see your portofolio working toward that? What do you hope these pieces communicate to viewers?
I am striving to make innovative art that causes a reaction. There are millions of images out there of beautifully rendered scenes and figures. I look to art history to evoke a sense that’s familiar and different at the same time. My abstracts are meant to communicate emotion, sometimes in ironic ways. I’m trying to make art with mystery behind it — not just something pretty.
Building on the previous question, how do you decide the title for a piece? How do the titles of the works in this portfolio help us “experience a sense of wonder?”
I like cryptic titles meant to create a What-the-Hell reaction from viewers. I often take titles from mid-century or later rock music. Sometimes it’s music I was listening to when I made the collage.
You note that artists you admire “tap unconscious feelings of longing for existential meaning that emerge from cultural icons.” Who are some of these artists, and how do you see this coming through in their work?
I’ve spent a lot of time studying the art of Arshile Gorky after seeing a retrospective of his work at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles. He also copied artists that he admired early in his career and made haunting surreal landscapes. I’ve used these as inspiration. Gorky’s imagery looks familiar and indiscernible at the same time.
Kenneth Calahan, one of the mid-century “Northwest mystics,” is also a huge influence. He was inspired by Chinese landscape.
Your artwork has won 17 awards and has been featured in over 50 shows and publications. Tell us about some of those awards, and where we can find more of your work.
I’ve been active in the Northwest Collage Society in the Seattle area which hosts 4 shows a year. My figure “Kingdom Within” won the “Innovation Award” in 2014. https://bit.ly/2RTovUu Since then, “Kingdom Within” has appeared in 8 shows including a mental health show in Vancouver. Funny story — I had a student drive the piece from Seattle to Vancouver. He was held at the border for 3 hours because they thought he was smuggling art! A call from the curator got him released for the delivery.
Another favorite honor was winning a national award in 2015 for the Mid American Review Inspired Art contest. The literary journal asked for art based on one of their stories. “Life Cycle” fit perfectly. Came with a $500 prize plus $700 commission on sale of prints. https://bit.ly/3h9iRpZ
What projects are you currently working on?
After taking a class last year at the Kirkland Art Center I was inspired to try portraits and developed a technique of laying tissue for the skin. I chose mostly famous musicians as subjects. https://bit.ly/3djgyiZ
I made a self portrait titled “Will You Still Need Me?” using the tissue technique that won an Honorable Mention award for the Grey Cube Gallery contest in 2020. https://bit.ly/35Qny2O
What’s it like being an artist on Whidbey Island?
We moved to north Whidbey Island this year after my wife retired. It’s a center for creative people who pour themselves into art, music and theater. We’re surrounded by natural beauty: beaches, forested parks, harbors and inlets with views of the San Juan Island and Cascade and Olympic mountains. Just about the ideal place for artistic inspiration.
