The Scottish artist Jamie Gallagher creates visceral and contorted portraits with vibrant and viscous layers of paint. There is a profound understanding of colour theory and composition in the works, which fluctuate between figurative and expressionist forms that can feel both beautiful and grotesque at the same time, utilising everything from heavy impasto oils and raw, textured linens, to delicate gold leaf, diamond dust and bleeding inks. The intense nature of the paintings is in part due to the fact that Gallagher didn’t begin painting until he lost a close friend to cancer. As such, painting became a vital form of introspective self-therapy, in which he could both explore the medium expression and overcome grief. In this interview with House Collective Journal, he unfurls the meaning in his work, and tells us why the reception of an artwork is an artistic act in itself.
What drives you to create?
It’s all about the work for me. Making my art is such a personal journey that the process itself is the achievement. People bringing their own experiences to the work was something that really spurred me on to create more in the early days – the first few works I sold were to an army psychologist working with soldiers with PTSD, a cancer patient with a fresh diagnosis and a gentleman who had experienced abuse from the Catholic Church. All three of these people reacted instantly to certain works, then came and purchased the pieces from me directly, and each spent a good few hours sharing their experiences with me. I find that very humbling as a painter.
It sounds like connection is important to you – what do you consider to be the purpose of art?
I think the purpose of art is to provoke a response. How much or little an artist chooses to control that response is up to them, but, ultimately, it's got to be the objective – whether it’s joy or repulsion. I’ve had people contact me saying my work made them cry, which is quite a shocking thing to hear. I think one of the most memorable responses was when I showed a selection of works at an exhibition in Bath. The work was in a space that was used for other purposes, as well as the exhibition, so people were confronted with it unexpectedly. I was called by the manager of the space, who said she had had a woman come to her, very worked up, and complaining about the artwork — saying that the artist clearly needed help, and asking why all the mouths in the images were bound and gagged, and how disturbing it all. Weirdly, none of the paintings had mouths, let alone bindings across the mouth, and the work was quite varied in subject matter – but what excited me about her reaction was that she clearly had brought her own trauma to the table, she had imbued the work with meaning herself, from her own experience, yet her anger was with me for creating the paintings.
What is your own emotional relationship with the paintings?
Painting is a hugely important part of my life and my balance, it’s become the way I process everything in my life, from stress to trauma, difficult decisions and finding a way forward. The work is produced in a very instinctive way without a plan of the final image, embracing accidents and guiding the materials along the way – when the work is finished and I step back and really spend time with it, whatever I was working through subconsciously while the work was created becomes clear to me. That’s the reason naming the work is so important – the names may seem obtuse, but they are a breadcrumb trail to take me back to the experience, and what I worked through in the creation. This interplay of instinctive mark making and slow rationalisation allows me to express the inexpressible, not painting what I’ve seen, but what I’ve felt.
There is a strange relationship between the grotesque and the beautiful in your work, what is that about?
Yeah, my work can be quite grotesque on first look, but for me the beauty is in the materials and the details. I want the viewer to get in close to the the work to really experience the thick sculptural jewels of paint, the marbling and texture – these strokes are very considered and highly abstract when you get up close and personal. I love people to interact by physically moving back and forth when they view the work, enjoying the abstract clusters of individual beautiful elements that, as a whole, may create a darker, visceral, even vulgar image. Through the distorted forms and fragmented figures, I’m exploring the tension between reality and the subconscious, inviting viewers to confront the complexities of their own identity, emotion, and corporeality, but at the same time, making entirely self-indulgent work.
Jamie Gallagher bring his work to London this October at StART KX at Town Hall by Boccaccio in London's King's Cross. Find out more about the artist here:
