Born in New Jersey in 1936, Gregory Gillespie began his studies at The Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art in New York and completed his BFA and MFA degrees at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1962. Awarded a Fulbright-Hayes Grant and the Chester Dale fellowship, Gillespie traveled to Italy and worked there, at the American Academy in Rome, until 1970. In Italy, Gillespie created real and imaginary narratives of European life, often highly charged with sexuality and emotional power. These works were presented by Forum Gallery in Gillespie's first one-person exhibition in 1966, and the response was immediate and positive. After three more shows at Forum, a remarkable retrospective exhibition was presented at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC) and the Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA) in 1977.

The Hirshhorn exhibition, with its accompanying illustrated catalogue, brought Gillespie to national prominence. Settling in Massachusetts, where he spent the rest of his life, Gillespie turned his painter's attention to his own life and its immediate surroundings. His studio interiors incorporated symbolic references, utilitarian objects, clothing, artist's materials and photographs, while his landscapes were populated, above and below the earth's surface, by often surreal creatures that defy description. Highly detailed and unsparingly intense self-portraits and portraits of his family members formed the core of Gregory Gillespie's output, and his work was acquired and exhibited by prominent museums and private collectors. Forum Gallery represented Gillespie throughout, presenting seventeen one-person exhibitions and arranging others at galleries and museums across America. A retrospective exhibition, "Gregory Gillespie - A Unique American Vision," was organized by the Georgia Museum of Art in 1999 and was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the List Visual Art Center at M.I.T., Cambridge; and the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown.

The forthcoming Forum Gallery exhibition will include paintings from every period and subject of Gregory Gillespie's career. Many of these have not been shown publicly for decades.

Gillespie’s paintings are included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR and many others.