Born in Pendleton, Oregon, Jerry Allen Gilmore earned a BFA in fiber and painting, a minor in both art history and creative writing/poetry from Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington, and an MFA in painting and drawing from Washington State University, Pullman, Washington. Over the past thirty years, Gilmore has built a unique and impressive career as both an artist and arts administrator including a combined seventeen years in Director and Curatorial practice at MARS Art-space, Phoenix, Arizona, the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, Fort Collins, Colorado, the CU Art Galleries, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, and as the Visual Arts Director / Curator at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada, Colorado. Upon relocation to the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, Maryland, since 2016, Gilmore has continued his curatorial projects, artist portfolio reviews, jurying for both regional and national art institutions and continually discovering his own personal artwork and writings.
Gilmore has exhibited in New York, San Francisco, New Zealand, Peru, and Mexico. His work also appears in the collections of the Nordstrom Corporation, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Arizona State University Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum and among numerous private collections throughout the U.S. Gilmore’s intimate miniatures and sweeping, large scale drawings and paintings are deceptively personal as he adopts a cast of animated characters and symbols to relate his own story. This work playfully addresses the often awkward issues that life’s every movement possesses a humorous bend on the river, where one may be given aid by animals, magicians and shamans or menaced by devils, clowns and bumble bees. Where you go depends upon where you have been, and where you can go depends upon what you can imagine.