"Dining Room", 12"x16", oil on canvas paper, age 5
Walsh founded the Mindbender Gallery in 2021 as a platform for promoting and selling his fine art. The physical gallery fell victim to two years of the Pandemic and was forced to close its doors at the end of 2022.
Walsh began his pursuit of art at the age of five, with his first oil painting, a still life set in the dining room of his family's home in Eugene, Oregon. Under the guidance of his mother, a Fine Arts and Interior Design Major at the University of Washington, Walsh was taught the basics of color and design at an early age.
Founder of The Storytelling Company®, Gregory S. Walsh is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, film, photography, books, and music. His large-scale abstract expressionist paintings are bold acts of creative trust — as he says, “I paint as I direct films — aware of the arc, but open to the unexpected turns that give the story its life.”
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A seasoned filmmaker, published author, and composer, Walsh integrates decades of storytelling mastery into every brushstroke. His process is a leap without a parachute — sheer guts, embracing the unknown, and trusting imagination to deliver a safe landing.
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Launching August 24, 2025, Walsh’s Mindbender Gallery LIVE YouTube series will stream 30-minute abstract expressionist painting sessions each Sunday, offering audiences an unfiltered view of the artistic journey from blank canvas to finished masterpiece.
Photo: Ivan Colin
One of the benefits of an artist mother was that she exposed him to fine art exhibits and especially to touring abstract expressionist paintings from the New York School that were shown at the University of Oregon art museum. Those early impressions of works by Pollock, de Kooning, Kline, Rauschenberg, Rothko, Motherwell, and the Northwest masters, Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves and Mark Tobey, were fused in Walsh's young brain and artistic sensibility.
University of Oregon Museum, Eugene, Oregon
As a senior at Lakeside School in Seattle I spent the year basically camped out on the third floor art department in Bliss Hall. Besides art class, I painted every afternoon after school except during basketball season. My art teacher was Robert Fulghum, who later became famous for his book "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". Fulghum would bring his sack lunch during art class and sit on a tall stool behind me in the entrance to the long hallway where my easel stood. Occasionally, he would make a comment about something I was doing, otherwise, just watch me create weird abstracts with acrylics on mason board. He tended to ignore the other art students laboring away on their easels up and down the hallway. His focus on my work was inspiring in that it must not have been boring to him.
Bliss Hall, Lakeside School Seattle, Washington
EARLY INSPIRATION
Cornish College of Arts, Seattle (photo: Joe Mabel)
RETURN
TO PAINT
In many ways, my work is a reflection of the painters I admired from his youth. I attended The Cornish College of Arts in the early 1970s, but later pursued education and a career as a filmmaker. At age 62 I returned to painting on a part-time/full time basis. The works on this website date from 2015 through the present. I have exhibited my work in solo shows or group shows in galleries throughout the Northwest since January 2016.
ARTIST STATEMENT
When I approach
a fresh swath of canvas,
I empty my mind
and allow an image to appear in my imagination.
It is a bit like the moment of deciding to leap out of an airplane at 10,000 feet.
You feel the harsh bite of rushing frigid air,
the vertigo of nothing between you
and a patchwork of earth far below.
You leap then realize you have no parachute.
That is what it is like for me to paint my abstract paintings.
Sheer guts to put marks to the surface
not knowing if the ultimate result will be a work of art,
or a messy splatter.
But it is that thrill of not knowing,
but trusting that imagination
will ultimately deliver me safely to the ground
that drives my passion for abstract expressionism.
