Tabletop Still Life With Tits and Peonies (After Hokusai)
51.5" x 46"
Acrylic On Canvas On Panel
“Images and their attendant associations are constantly slipping, and this ‘slippage’ can keep the image flexible enough to accommodate an endless range of readings….making sense out of non-sense that slips back into nonsense and making flippy-floppy, and ‘looking good’ doing it.”
-Michael Gallagher
Kerplunk Again
24.5" x 24.5"
Acrylic On On Canvas On Panel
In a review of a 2016 exhibit of Michael Gallagher’s paintings, critic Stan Mir wrote, “Gallagher’s new work…deliberately tests the supposed line between abstraction and figuration.” Gallagher himself says of his paintings, “Images and their attendant associations are constantly slipping, and this ‘slippage’ can keep the image flexible enough to accommodate an endless range of readings….making sense out of non-sense that slips back into nonsense and making flippy-floppy, and ‘looking good’ doing it.” Even the titles lend a degree of specificity to the images without completely shunting them into a single narrow read.
Gallagher’s evolution has led him to a career where he has explored both representation and abstraction; embracing an equilibrium that is uniquely his. His abstract paintings include “varying degrees of ’represented’ forms and genres…tabletop still life motifs, which include flowers, birds, and fruit in an interior setting…interior settings with windows, which can double as paintings and can also provide a portal to the outside world….Finally, figurative elements (that) are beginning to exert a presence…”
Blackflower (Magnolia 2), 36" x 48", Acrylic On Panel
Michael Gallagher is a painter whose work moves freely between abstraction and representation.
His works are in a number of public and corporate collections including Aronson and Partners, Philadelphia Pa, Delotte and Touche, New York, NY, PepsiCo, New York, NY, MasterCard, New York, NY, the Wilmington Trust, Time Warner, Legg Mason, The Franklin Mint, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Woodmere Museum of Art.
He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where he is currently a Professor and a six -time recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award.
Large Pastoral With Figures (Gardening At Night), 80" x 96", Acrylic On Panel
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Gross McCleaf Gallery invites you to experience the magic of summer with a group exhibition titled Summer Playlist. Curated like a finely tuned mixtape, this vibrant selection of works explores seasonal themes of celebration, relaxation, and engagement with nature.
Long before recorded history, humans identified divinity in the natural world. Across the globe, cave paintings and petroglyphs represent the land, the animals and the supernatural. Prehistoric burial mounds and henges of Northern Europe align with equinoxes and solstices. At Newgrange in Ireland, decorated stone carvings record the phases of the moon and depict rays emerging over the horizon at sunrise. Contemporary viewers can only infer the exact meanings of these monumental relics, etched with waves, spirals and diamonds juxtaposed with recognizable imagery.
As contemporary innovation, architecture, technology and design increasingly position each person as the master of their own exclusive universe, the artists in Concerning The Spiritual In Landscape have humbly venerated the life-giving light, ever-present matter and perpetual cycles of nature that bring forth all things.
“…the idea that a shape/form can occupy multiple spatial conditions and potential readings keeps me engaged in both making and looking… a Duck/Rabbit thing, rooted in the complexities and pleasure of perception.”
-Michael Gallagher
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present, INFINITION, a solo exhibition of bold and colorful abstractions by Michael Gallagher.
Enigmatic, delightfully playful and bold, Gallagher’s new works at first appear as accomplished abstractions that reference modernist forms. Painted biomorphic shapes swirl around the surface, producing a centrifugal force generated from the center of the painting outward. Texture and varied paint application break the solidity of flat planes of color creating implied space in the composition. The shapes then alternately poke into those spaces and push out, shifting the relationship between what is considered the figure and what is the ground.
“I have a longing for a certain beauty that’s hard to describe, but it’s usually associated with summer colors. My desire for this summertime feeling seems inexhaustible, and though I’ve been trying for many years, I don’t feel like I am ever really satisfied.”
- Kurt Moyer
For over a decade, Kurt Moyer’s work has combined his love of nature with his reverence for art history. Born in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Moyer spent much of his youth exploring the Barnes Collection in Merion, Pennsylvania. Moyer now resides in rural New York near Rochester where he spends his time plein air painting from the beginning of spring until late fall. These passions converge in Moyer’s new abstract paintings on view at Gross McCleaf...
