GJ Gillespie Art

ARTIST BIO

Gillespie Oak Harbor Home

GJ Gillespie is a mixed-media collage artist based on Whidbey Island, Washington, whose work reimagines cultural icons — classical mythology, art history, and mid-century rock music — through layers of found paper, colored tissue, newsprint, and grocery ads. Working from a 1928 Tudor Revival farmhouse overlooking Oak Harbor, he transforms everyday materials into abstract compositions that invite existential reflection rather than mere aesthetic pleasure. His primary influences are the Northwest Mystics, whose haunting regional imagery he regards as a spiritual ancestor to his own practice, and the mid-century abstract expressionists, particularly Arshile Gorky.

His work is organized into three ongoing series: Echoes from the Ancient World, bringing Greek and Roman mythology into contemporary collaged contexts (Helen, Alexander, Ozymandias, Leda, Adonis, Odysseus); Gorky Rifts, a sustained improvisation on Abstract Expressionism through the seven-piece Crazy Diamond sequence; and Northwest Mystics, abstract landscapes rooted in the Pacific Northwest tradition. All works are titled after rock and pop songs, creating layered cultural resonance between ancient imagery and mid-century music.

Award Winning Art.

A Professor Emeritus of Communication with 32 years at Northwest University, Gillespie has received 23 awards, exhibited in 71 shows across Washington, British Columbia, Mississippi, and Arizona — including a solo international exhibition at the Langley BC Arts Council — and appeared in more than 208 literary and art publications, with 23 cover selections. He has completed six artist residencies at the UW Whiteley Center at Friday Harbor Labs, San Juan Island.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a Whidbey Island collage artist, I find inspiration in art history — particularly the haunting works of the Northwest Mystics and the biomorphic abstractions of Arshile Gorky. My medium is mixed-media collage: colored tissue, disassembled newsprint, Fred Meyer grocery ads, crossword puzzles, cheesecloth, and found papers layered with acrylic, oil, pencil, and ink. The resulting surfaces feel simultaneously ancient and immediate, excavated rather than composed.

My work consciously “stands on the shoulders of giants.” Rather than pursuing wholly original design, I riff on cultural icons — Greek myths, Pompeii frescoes, canonical paintings, ancient rulers — transforming them through collage into what I call individuations of universal imagery: forms that feel both familiar and newly mysterious in their new context.

I am drawn to subjects that carry unconscious weight: the longing, hubris, beauty, and impermanence embedded in stories we have told for thousands of years. Titling each work after a rock or pop song adds another layer of cultural resonance, colliding ancient imagery with mid-century music in ways that are sometimes ironic, sometimes elegiac, always intentional.

"Tell Me Why" by GJ Gillespie.

In my view, abstraction should be more than pleasing design. Art should evoke the connotations that allow a viewer to experience wonder, awe, and new perspectives on being. The artists I most admire — Gorky, Tobey, Graves, Anderson — tapped unconscious feelings of longing for existential meaning that emerge from cultural icons.

That is the tradition I am working within, and working to extend, from my farmhouse studio on Whidbey Island, through the fog and light of the Pacific Northwest.

“The world is but a canvas to our imagination.” — Henry David Thoreau

Between making art I manage an international art supply company selling my own brand of sketchbooks throughout North America and Europe. Leda Arts Supply.

Founder of The Creativity Initiative, a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.

Bio

GJ Gillespie is a collage artist living in a 1928 farmhouse overlooking Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, WA. A prolific artist with 22 awards to his name, his work has been exhibited in 71 shows and appeared in more than 208 publications.

GJ Gillespie Resume

Publications VITA

PRICING

Larger pieces range from $340 to $1200.
Framing and shipping is available.

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