by GJ Gillespie Mixed media collage on canvas 24 × 36″ 2025 $950
Title after Jimmy Buffett's 2006 song set in Tierra del Fuego
— the southernmost tip of South America, where the continent dissolves into the sea.
A celebration teetering gloriously at the edge of the world.
About the work
An energetic, color-saturated abstract in the Midcentury Rifts series — Gillespie's ongoing exploration of mid-century abstract expressionism refracted through found materials and rock and pop music titles. The work was inspired by an Arshile Gorky landscape, its biomorphic color rifts and fluid organic forms reinterpreted through the layered language of collage.
Built from found papers, tissue, acrylic, spray paint, graphite, and grocery advertisements on canvas. The composition moves outward from a dense central field of layered color into looser gestural passages at the edges — a center that holds and a periphery that celebrates its own dissolution. Like the Buffett song, it knows the world is ending and throws a party anyway.
Publication
- Trace Fossils Review, forthcoming 2026
Exhibition
- Modern Myth Making, City of Burien Gallery Program at Merrill Gardens, June 5 – September 24, 2026
To purchase Contact GJ Gillespie at garjog@gmail.com
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| GJ Gillespie Artist |
Artist Statement
My work exists outside of time. Ancient Greek heroes emerge from supermarket circulars and consumer ephemera. Egyptian pharaohs are built from crossword puzzles. Mid-century abstract figures dissolve into Pacific Northwest landscapes layered with colored tissue and found paper.
Working in mixed-media collage from a 1928 Tudor Revival farmhouse on Whidbey Island, I stand on the shoulders of giants — riffing on cultural icons from Greek mythology, Pompeii frescoes, and the mid-century masters who transformed what painting could express: Arshile Gorky, the Northwest Mystics Morris Graves, Mark Tobey, and Kenneth Callahan.
Titles of each piece are drawn from rock and pop music, connecting ancient imagery with modern soundtracks.
While the themes may seem lofty, viewers will sense a playfulness in the work. Pompeii frescoes meet grocery ads. Ancient Greek busts emerge from fast food wrappers. When it comes to making art I follow the philosophy of Thoreau: the world is but a canvas to our imagination.
Biography
GJ Gillespie (b. 1955) lives and works in a 1928 Tudor Revival farmhouse on Whidbey Island, WA. His mixed-media collage practice draws on the Northwest Mystics, mid-century abstract expressionism, Greek and Roman mythology, and song titles from rock and pop music. He has completed six residencies at the UW Whiteley Center, Friday Harbor Labs. In addition to winning 19 awards, his work has appeared in 77 exhibitions and 214 journal publications.
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| GJ Gillespie Studio |
Gillespie Home overlooking Oak Harbor
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