Conversations with Gary Palmer

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gary Palmer.

Hi Gary, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up during the conflict in Holywood, just East of Belfast, Northern Ireland. After architecture school at university of Edinburgh, I traveled around the world as a street painter, settling in America in 1996. For the past 25 years, I’ve been painting from my studio in Venice. One series of my work is based on memories of a journey from Malawi to Zanzibar island. I’ve been lucky in that a few well-known actors have fallen in love with this series over the years – that has been very helpful in the development of my work. Collectors include Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas, Jamie Harris. Most recently, I’ve been working on a commission – some large-scale paintings for Halle Berry.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Looking back, I feel I’ve been very fortunate to live a colorful life, to travel the world, and make my living from something I’m passionate about. There have been challenges along the way – times when I’ve lived very frugally in order to follow my soul path. My work is constantly developing and changing as I move through different chapters of life – overall, my work is very diverse – that has been a challenge in the sense that a gallery is inclined to like to have a singular style to package and market. In the context of a diverse body of work – careful archiving is necessary to separate the work out into distinct series. For example, my perspective street drawings is public art and very different to my more intimate Zanzibar series – reflecting memories from a journey in east Africa.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I could briefly mention four distinct series – which are maybe The best known. Some people seem drawn to one series but not the others, but some who know me better perceive a throughline in the sensibility of all the work…. There’s the perspective street drawings which have some connection to my architectural studies. There’s the Zanzibar series – which relates to personal memories of people and places I’ve visited. Then there are two more conceptual series from my studio work – ‘Particulate Fields’ – which relate to time spent at a meditation retreat near the border to Mexico. The fourth series is the ‘Distilled Landscape series’ which are reductionist work in Japanese Sumi ink – abstracting the traditional ‘landscape’ to a single black horizon line.

We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
This has been a reflective introspective period for an entire global society – while I like social interaction I’m also aware that introspective time is valuable to the development of my work – for me, it’s been a fruitful time to work and to explore inside. I’ve been working on a project – an art retreat in the south of France in a remote medieval village. It’s a place where creative people can step back in time, live simply, prepare food from an organic garden, and focus on their work in a well-equipped studio space.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.garypalmerart.com
• Instagram: @garypalmerart