I interviewed the great Michael Gallagher at his show
Hallucination Engine at Schmidt/Dean Gallery this month. It's up on Title Magazine
here. I first met Michael when I was in graduate school at PAFA, he has been a faculty member of the undergraduate program for many years. An enthusiastic and fearless painter (he told me he sanded down and entirely reworked and repainted one of the big pieces the weekend before the show opened), we got into topics from how he negotiates imagery to the current acrylic paints on his palette.
Read the full piece below:
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| Heat Engine (Dippy) 2016, acrylic on panel, 48 x 60 inches |
“Look, a student gave me a dippy bird!” exclaims painter Michael Gallagher as he greets me at his solo show
Hallucination Engine
at Schmidt Dean gallery recently. His enthusiasm for this little glass
figurine that bobs as it drinks from a glass of water underlines the
sense of humor and playfulness that he brings to his paintings. One of
the most successful works in the show titled,
Heat Engine (Dippy) echoes
the color and shape of that toy bird, a toy Gallagher admired deeply as
a child but never owned. As Gallagher explains in the exhibition
catalog , titles are derived by naming something that “lends a degree of
specificity without completely shunting [the painting] into a narrow
read.” This teetering place at the edge of recognition is the show’s
source of power.
At first glance, the scale and prominence of vibrant colors in
Hallucination Engine may
lead a viewer to falsely believe they are strictly formalist works
about shape and construction. Born less of that Hans Hofmann New York
School, this work owes more to Arthur Carles, Stuart Davis, Charles
Sheeler – the Philadelphia brand of modernism. It operates with a shared
belief in instinctive decision-making and solid compositional design, a
departure from a most austere approach towards imagery and play.
A sustained engagement with any canvas in
Hallucination Engine yields movement, and the enervating discovery of initially unseen elements, such as in
Big Pink, where
a tiny square becomes an elephant’s eye on a trunk-shaped profile. The
paintings unfold and nod back at you when given time and consideration.
Michael and I sat down in the gallery to look carefully and discuss
questions of process, intention and the best paint colors.
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| Big Pink, 2016, acrylic on panel, 53 1/2 x 72 inches |
AL: In the exhibition catalogue, your artist statement feels
very automatic and free, like a record of your mind making jumps and
connections. Does this relate to how you allow the work to come
together, through freedom and trial, or are you pushing against
something?
MG: Very much so – ‘free-range’ – how to get from one place to
another without a definitive map – something like that. I think ‘allow’
is an apt way to describe the process – a certain autonomy on the part
of the work – letting the painting determine a direction – it just seems
more interesting that way. If I were pushing against anything, it would
be a resolution that is too limiting and expected
AL: Do you have a certain intention for the work, as in where
it should sit between abstraction and representation or what happens
with regard to space, color?
MG: I do enjoy images that move between differing degrees of
abstraction and representation. These two terms, although useful, are
also problematic, due to their degree of relativity and differing usages
– I mean, I use them, but they always need clarification.
Of course, space and color are a central concern, inseparable from
one another, and I do spend a lot of time considering how forms sit in
space and relate to one another. I’m told that an abiding interest in
these matters, often referred to as ‘formal’ or ‘modernist’ are no
longer sufficient unto themselves, but I don’t quite see it that way. A
really good Amy Sillman painting, which connects to a Diebenkorn, that
hinges on a Matisse, which converses with a Cezanne, that drinks from a
Delacroix, that dreams of Rubens, that sings to Titian, who honors
Bellini, who gets so much from the Byzantine tradition of painted icons
and, well, let’s just cut to Giotto (and that’s only the Western route).
All of these reference points insist on a type of visual language that
privileges structure and complexity through space, color and
composition.
AL: What is the significance of the magnolia for this series which is the title of a few of the paintings?
MG: I have painted this motif for at least a decade at this point. It
began with the more naturalistic paintings – a series of table top
still-life’s that concentrated on ‘white’ as the subject of the work,
white crockery and the like, which led to the ‘white’ of the magnolia,
perhaps influenced by John Peto’s series of magnolia paintings and
certain works by Martin Johnson Heade.
They became for me a symbol of Spring. I would run around town clipping a few examples, from
buds just beginning to open to full blown blossoms. They are a real
challenge because they bloom so quickly – you have to work fast. They
are very sensual forms – the most interesting still-life images have
that sensual element – and they have recently been imposing themselves
on the more abstract works.
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| Blackflower (Magnolia 2) 2016, acrylic on panel, 36 x 48 |
AL: Is color derived more from a perceptual decision or an emotional one?
MG: Both are in play, along with intuition, a conceptual viewpoint
and purposeful choices based on color principles. If one spends enough
time making and looking, these long-standing color
combinations become second nature. Most painters I speak with don’t seem to premeditate or
systematize their color usage – in fact when I mentioned that I had been using a color wheel in
my studio recently, I got more than a few quizzical looks.
AL: What are your favorite paints on your palette at the moment?
MG: Magenta/various types of blue/greens (Azurite/ Turquoise
Green/Yellow Green), Quinacridone Violet, (various grays) – what might
be described as high-keyed, saturated ‘contemporary‘ colors. Not unlike
the colors in Bonnard paintings painted a hundred years ago. Hah! So
much for the contemporary.
AL: What work have you been looking at recently?
MG: I recently visited the Degas exhibition at the Modern, Bill
Scott’s solo show in New York, along with the Bonnard retrospective in
San Francisco. All great examples of the type of work that allows for
sustained viewing: the more you look, the more you get, but you gotta
pony up. Of course, I’m constantly looking at books and images online –
always.
AL: What couple words or phrases do you hope it boils down
to? What do you hope a viewer of your work leaves the show thinking
about?
MG: Surprise – the pleasure of looking, and a sense of discovery.
Painting can do so much. Paintings, along with other forms of visual
art, all art-forms, recalibrate the way we see and think the world. The
multiple reads an image can offer are, for me at least, enjoyable and a
constant reminder that it pays
to pay attention. In the words of Dave Hickey, ‘Art is the antidote to everything else’ – how can you top that?
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The show is up through this Saturday, May 28th! Check it out at
Schmidt Dean 1719 Chestnut St.
