The Painted Life of Gregory Gillespie

2025· 90 min·

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. Drawing on previously unseen archival footage and extensive interviews with artists, family and art world insiders, and using arresting photography and storytelling to pull viewers into Gillespie's work and process, Goodchild uncovers the full story of an artist's escape from an insular New Jersey upbringing to study in New York and Italy and become one of the most celebrated, coveted and disturbing painters of the 1970s and beyond.