Michael Gallagher
Flock 1, Oil On Canvas, 48" x 48"
Gross McCleaf Gallery is pleased to present Flock, a new exhibition of paintings by Michael Gallagher. In this series, Gallagher reduces recognizable motifs of birds into rhythmic arrangements of geometric shapes and earthen color, exploring how far the images can be pushed and patterned while retaining their recognition.
Rooted in earlier studio experiments, the new paintings widen a compact visual vocabulary into fields that feel both fluid and highly architectural. Shapes toggle between figure and ground. Whites behave as both positive forms and open intervals. Color blocks and crisp seams create repeatable units, readable like measures in a musical score. Gallagher describes the shifts in scale and spliced forms as: “...lend(ing) themselves to an ‘all-over’ strategy; they’re Pollock-like, where hierarchies are reduced if not eradicated completely. Pattern and repetition are in play, and the space is flattened.”
Across works such as the panoramic diptych Large Flock and the interlocking, jagged grids of Flock 4 (Pink and Green) and Flock 7 (Whirlygig), visual recognition rises and recedes. Beaks, eyes, and wings appear, slip out of focus, then reassemble elsewhere.
Flock 4 (Pink and Green), Oil On Panel, 62" x 51"
Gallagher frames that experience as a test of perception, asking, “How far can I push the imagery away from a clear reading regarding subject matter…Can the reference be found or arrived at with very little information available?”
The aim is not to hide the subject, but to make the act of continually looking at them active and gratifying.
A central idea in the studio is what Gallagher calls ‘slippage’, where a form holds multiple roles at once. A triangle can be a beak, an arrow, or a wedge of light within its context.
“If I can stumble into multiple ways that slippage can occur, all the better,” Gallagher says. That open, iterative method produces surfaces that feel both constructed and lively, with hand-worked textures softening sharp geometry. The result is a body of work that balances order and play, inviting viewers to engage with colors, edges, and textures as the pictures’ primary terms.
Black Swan at the Edge of the World, Acrylic On Panel, 9.75" x 10"
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 Fine Arts, and the Woodmere Museum of Art.
He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he is currently a Professor and a six-time recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award.
