GELLATLY

Drawing will never be the same for me...........after that last one.

Born in Connecticut, raised on New England, Gellatly, living and working in Miami for the last 8 years, has recently rerooted back up north, to Dutchess County, upstate New York. He has exhibited throughout New England and New York in both solo and group shows, and continued that practice in Florida. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant, and numerous state Individual Artist Grants; CT, MA,. He has been the recipient of several full fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center, to the Millay Artist Colony, NY, and was granted a 2 year project-residency at the Deering Estate, Miami, FL.. Along with this, Gellatly has been working as a freelance illustrator for the past 25 years, and has taught art intermittently throughout the years to every academic level and to all ages. 

The current project, Scenic Overlooks, the Red Drawings 2019, are driven by the act of intuitive drawing, observation, and thinking. Drawing for Gellatly is his beginning and end.

Gellatly’s a maker, and where it comes to his art practice, his hands are in everything. He continues to develop new iconography for every step he takes. As a teacher, he’s written across his classroom wall -  ‘In order to live in a new world, we must speak in a new language’. His art moves in this model. His process is cyclical - moving organically from form to form, medium to medium, fiction to nonfiction, round and round and…  and in so doing, allows himself to enter this wheel, his process, with tools in hand, at any contextual point and method of making.

He’s always been involved with sculpture in one form or another while serving various purposes within his practice. The most recent construction project, at once ephemeral and concrete, are made on tabletop, somewhat diorama settings, small and intimate. These building sites are filmic in nature, each becoming sculpture, theatrical stagings for photo, documentation, become shifting sets with mercurial narratives, all in an ongoing play. His photographs hold the evidence, others inspire drawings - fleshing out specific narratives, that in term feed back into the assemblage process, prompting more photographs, moving drawing toward more imagery.