(Roselle Park, New Jersey, 1936-2000)
"I've always thought
that in some deep ways Catholicism has had a huge effect on my art
as it has in my soul," said Gregory Gillespie once, as he reflected
on his strict upbringing. His work was indeed Catholic in the broad
sense of the term, because it was universal, not easily classified
or categorized, though often called surrealistic and otherworldly.
Though he emerged as an artist during the period of abstract expressionism,
characterized by large gestural abstraction, he remained devoted
to intimate, highly detailed realist painting. Gillespie was obsessed
with the power of his own painting to create worlds within worlds,
and was a master in the technique of trompe
l'œil (painting that
'tricks the eye' into perceiving a painted detail as a three-dimensional
object) which is evident in this work's framing. Gillespie's work
is almost exclusively autobiographical, and is infused with themes
of guilt and sin. In this image, a man sleeps in the background,
dreaming the scene of a strange creature and woman having their portrait
painted by Gillespie. |
