The name Pat Gallagher resonates with the archetype of all that is Irish in a man who simultaneously embodies the spirit of the leprechaun, the heart and stamina of the few benevolent gods, and the artistic hues of Beowulf’s celtic relatives.  In a modern art gallery, a casual visitor might be tempted to compare Gallagher’s soft cubism to Picasso, but such an association incompletely addresses both the art’s sincerity and sometimes ironic humor boldly displayed by lines dark as dirt and colors well loved, scumbled like the rocks on the Irish coast, but never muted, awarded their own unique contrasts through juxtaposition with light and form.  Gallagher’s works phenomenologically provide an intense emotional experience for any careful observer of art and enthusiastic practitioner of life.  We are drawn in by an energy that is both modern and ancient.

If, as Oscar Wilde posits, “life imitates art far more than art imitates life” because “the self-conscious aim of life is to find expression,” then we indeed identify the correct lens by which to view Gallagher and his art.  Original expression necessarily requires freedom, and Gallagher is not a man who relishes rules—yet he freely accepts the consequences of this choice.  “Gallagher’s Rebellion” might serve one day as title for his biography, but paradoxically so since Gallagher does not chafe against life or art, but rather, celebrates their unrestricted essence.  And when conflict inevitably occurs, as when the Jesuits suggested Gallagher depart the academy for  the public high school, Gallagher good-naturedly proceeds on his way.  Such a philosophy could deteriorate into the realm of the court jester, or worse, culminate in selfishness, but Gallagher’s life and art embody neither the fool nor the self-centered nihilist.  Indeed, the one institution which many would characterize as the overbearing societal rule, marriage, exists instead as transcendent guide for Gallagher, a choice that resonates benevolence, humor, selflessness.

As Gallagher explains, unlike other rules designed arbitrarily to order that which we cannot order ourselves, commitment exists as an individual choice derived from purity of spirit.  His ability to express himself through art depends upon the good humor, kind nature and saint’s patience of his wife Trish, a woman whose keen insight and true appreciation of life as it is given provides both the flexible structure and the grounding security of love without which Gallagher would likely fall into, as he terms it, a return to Neanderthal man.  As a result of his long time marriage to Trish, an accomplished professor and world-wide expert on autism, Gallagher is not selfish and only sometimes reckless.  Trish, along with their two magical sons, define Gallagher’s raison d’etre and powerfully inspire and enable his art:  Gallagher experiences his subject matter and attaches symbolic significance to that concept of marriage and family overlooked or even erased by traditional societal rules.

Through the individual choice of structure symbolized by family, Gallagher’s expression blossoms and his art transcends any single definition, functioning instead as both adjective and spirit—a  zeitgeist that rewards viewers’ careful attention with a renewal of the sense of magic married to the transformative, figurative power of painting.  The power of Gallagher’s expressive art to awaken life in the individual requires his unique persona of risk, perception and heart, and we are glad for it.