Mixed media collage on board 25 × 25 × 1.75″. 2025 --$495
Title after Pink Floyd's 1975 epic "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" — an elegy for Syd Barrett, the band's visionary and troubled founder.
About the work
The sixth work in an ongoing series inspired by the biomorphic abstractions of Arshile Gorky — known as the Founder of Abstract Expressionism. Where Gorky dissolved the human figure into organic, liquid forms that exist between the recognizable and the abstract, the Crazy Diamond series pushes further into pure abstraction, the figure all but dissolved into color, texture, and layered material.
This piece is built from found papers, tissue, acrylic, oil and spray paint, graphite, cloth, and grocery advertisements — materials assembled into a dense, luminous surface. The Pink Floyd lyrics from "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" are embedded in the undercoat, partly visible beneath the final layers.
In the Modern Myth Making installation, Crazy Diamond #6 hangs at the center of Window 4 in diamond orientation — rotated 45 degrees so its corners point up, down, left, and right — flanked by the two large anchor pieces Can't Help Myself and Everyone Knows It's Windy. The diamond shape was not planned as a curatorial decision. It arrived as a natural consequence of the square format and the title. A diamond is what a crazy diamond becomes.
Publication
- New Plains Review, University of Central Oklahoma, Winter 2025
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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