Jeffrey Gillespie

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Jeffrey Gillespie (born Cape Town, South Africa, 1974) is a South African art dealer, based in the United States, who focuses on outsider art, Art Brut, Guerilla Art and the German Expressionist School.

Gillespie began his career in 1994 and moved to the United States, (by way of London, England) after completing his B.A. in Art History at the University of Cape Town. He worked as a curator for the Flannery Collection in Bel-Air, California before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico where he worked as the private estate manager for John Crosby. He then moved into the art business full-time and worked with numerous luminary art figures including Louise Bourgeois, Jean-Claude Gaugy and Russian art legend Igor Melnikov. In 1999 Gillespie created a sensation in the U.S. Art community by selling a group of Melnikov paintings into the Stratford Collection in Lake Havasu, at a price well beyond what the artist was expected to fetch. The resulting press brought the attention of ArtNews magazine and was written up in ArtnewsLetter. New York dealer Bob Fishko also flew out from New York City to preview the work.

In 2001 Gillespie gave up a large chunk of his interests in the art business and settled Portland, Oregon, where he championed the work and artistic development of outsider artists and continues to push for change and growth in the burgeoning Pacific Northwest art scene. As Design Solutions, LLC, he has worked as an independent consultant with numerous galleries in the region, and now focuses on tribal arts of Sub-Saharan Africa, with emphasis on sculpture from the Shona people of Zimbabwe

He sites among his influences the artist Henry Darger, as well as Stanley Kubrick, Ayn Rand, Leo Castelli, Larry Gagosian, David Bohm, Georges Bataille, and Santa Fe art dealer Arlene LewAllen.