by GJ Gillespie Mixed media collage on plywood 24 × 20″ 2024 $695
Title after Pink Floyd's 1975 epic "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" — an elegy for Syd Barrett, the band's brilliant and troubled founder, written by Roger Waters.
About the work
This is the original work in a series of six midcentury inspired collages by the biomorphic abstractions of Arshile Gorky — known as the founder of Abstract Expressionism — and by one of rock music's most haunting tributes to a lost mind.
The Crazy Diamond series began here, on silk plywood, and grew into five further variations across canvas and board now hanging together in Window 4 of Modern Myth Making.
Gorky's influence is felt in the liquid, organic forms that seem to breathe and shift — figures that are neither fully human nor fully abstract, caught in a state of becoming. The Pink Floyd connection runs deeper than the title. The lyrics of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" — about brilliance undone by fragility, about the unbearable weight of a gift turned against itself — are embedded in the undercoat of the work, invisible beneath the layers of found papers, tissue, acrylic, oil and spray paint, graphite, cloth, and grocery advertisements that build the final surface.
The viewer sees the result. The song is underneath.
Publication
- Willows Wept Review, cover art, December 2023
Exhibition
- Coupeville Public Library, Ethereal Journeys, January 2026
- 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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