The Painted Life of Gregory Gillespie
Film Screening and Conversation with Peggy Gillespie and Barbara Cohen

Director Evan Goodchild learns that an artist committed suicide in the converted art studio where he lived for three years in Western Massachusetts. Further investigation reveals it wasn’t just any artist, but Gregory Gillespie (1936-2000), an American master of surreal, haunting paintings and sculptures, some of which are in collections as renowned as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney and the Hirshhorn in Washington D.C. Gillespie was also a member of the FAWC Summer Workshop faculty in the 90s, as well as being on the FAWC Visual Committee, which selects the visual arts Fellows. 

Drawing on previously unseen archival footage and extensive interviews with artists, family and art world insiders, Goodchild uncovers the full story about an artist’s escape from an insular New Jersey upbringing to study in New York and Italy. The award-winning film’s arresting photography and storytelling pulls viewers into Gillespie’s extraordinary artistic world, where he became one of the most celebrated, coveted and disturbing painters of the 1970s and beyond.