Pat Gallagher

This pastel drawing is called "Wild Irish Rose."

Pat Gallagher is just this much closer to getting his “license to be a little weird.” The former Main Liner who now lives in Kentucky is parlaying his penchant for doodling into a fulltime art career. In the past year, he’s achieved notable success:

He did a one-man show at the home of former Philadelphia 76ers’ coach Larry Brown.

He’s currently on a cross-country tour (called “From the Outside Looking In”), bringing his paintings not only to art galleries but to the livingrooms of high-rolling art lovers in Atlanta, Miami, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Boston.

On Derby day in Louisville, that will be Gallagher, the Ardmore-born son of Irish immigrants, drawing his heart out in “Millionaires’ Row” (“where the Queen was last year,” he points out).

Starting February 1, he’s having a month-long one-man show at the gallery at Advanced Medical Solutions, 52 Oakland Avenue in Doylestown, where you can see a little art, get a little acupuncture.

In March, one of his canvases (he works in pastels, pen and ink, and Sharpie) will be part of the WMGK Classic Rock Art Show to benefit Bon Jovi’s Soul Moving Experience charity, which sends needy kids to Soul games.

And he’s gotten the ultimate compliment. “I was going to a frou-frou event and I asked the person running it what I should wear. She said, ‘You’re the artist. You can wear whatever you want.’ And I’m like , that is so cool. I have a license to be a little weird. I like that! People always considered me a little quirky and now that’s okay because I’m an artist.”

Gallagher, who is self-taught, needed a push from the unseen powers of the universe to discover the artist inside. It first came from a New York art dealer who saw Gallagher in his usual artist mode, sitting in a bar with a glass of Woodford Reserve bourbon in front of him, doodling on an art pad. “He told me my style was like Henri Matisse and I said, ‘Who’s that?’ I had one art class in high school and I got a D. But he convinced me that I had talent worth exploring.”

Since then, he’s had a painting on loan to a Louisville art museum, invitations for exhibits and art shows, and at least one appreciative nod from an art world legend. Gallagher recalls meeting noted sports painter Leroy Neiman at an event in Kentucky and, of course, the conversation turned to art. “He happened to see a picture of mine called ‘Sisters’ on my phone and he interrupted me. He said, ‘Sorry, but whose work is that?’ I said it was mine. He said, ‘Really?’ And he asked me, ‘Is this your main form of expression?’ I said it was my only form of expression besides talking and I’m really good at that. He reached out and shook my hand and said, ‘It’s really a pleasure to meet you.”

Unlike many neophyte artists, Gallagher’s talent isn’t just for creating art that spawns an emotional connection between himself and the viewer (he’s actually had one prospective buyer burst into tears looking at one of his canvases). He’s a funny, friendly guy who knows how to market himself. He’s convinced the makers of Woodford Reserve bourbon to provide the alcohol for his home showcases and sent complimentary art work to prospective patrons (like Larry Brown’s wife) to encourage them to sponsor an event. Ultimately, it’s the artwork that clinches the deal, but it’s Gallagher’s Irish charm that first opens the door.

But it’s not about the money. Well, it is, but not so Gallagher and his wife Trisha can live in a McMansion and own a Saab apiece. The man who has spent his life in the business arena has finally found his calling and he’d like to spend his life heeding it.

“Before I found the art, I always felt like an outsider,” he confesses. “Back when I was hanging around Villanova, even at family get-togethers, I always had these crazy insecurities. But with the artwork, I feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. Weird things keep happening that encourage me to keep at it. And I’ve never been as remotely as happy as I am. When I’m pissed off, I paint. When I’m happy, I paint. When I’m bored, I paint.”

In fact, the only time he doesn’t paint is when his wife is worried. “Trisha has always been supportive, but she’s a military brat and she’s all about structure and plans,” he says. “I’ve learned this: If my wife is nervous or concerned about our stability, I can’t paint. If she’s feeling good, I’m painting like crazy. I hate that she has this over me, but she has. If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. My paintings are true love stories, because between her and I, that’s what this is.”

He admits that what he’s looking for now are his own Medicis, the Florence family who supported leading Renaissance artists such as Botticelli, Michaelangelo, and DaVinci. “If I had a backer I could storm the world!” he laughs.

But, like a true artist, Gallagher knows it’s ultimately not about the money. “If I never sell another painting, it’s what I’m going to do every day,” he says. “I recently told my mother, God forbid I was to croak, I would die a happy man. Of course, we’re morbid family, obsessed with death. What can I say?” He laughs again. “We’re Irish.”

To see more of Pat Gallagher’s work, visit his website.

“From the Outside Looking In,” a one-man show, will be at the gallery at Advanced Medical Solutions, 52 Oakland Avenue, Doylestown, PA (215-348-4002) the entire month of February. On Friday, February 1, meet the artist at a reception that starts at 6:30 PM.

Pat Gallagher’s first exposure to fine art was when he was a child. He was in a bathroom in one of the Main Line mansions his mother cleaned when he accidentally knocked a framed painting off the wall. “Thank God I caught it,” he says. “It was an original Picasso, right there in their crapper. Can you imagine that? A lot of people have told me I channel Picasso, but I don’t know about that.”

In the movies, the rest of the story would go something like this: Pat, the son of Irish immigrants who is growing up in what were servants’ quarters in the shadow of Ardmore’s mansions, scrimps and saves to buy his first set of oils and starts painting feverishly. At 18, his portfolio of canvases buys him passage to the Sorbonne and, from there, to New York where he becomes one of the art world’s glitterati.

But this isn’t the movies. And, although Pat is now an artist, until about a year ago, he was an executive recruiter in Louisville, KY, who doodled a lot.

“I was always a doodler,” he says. “My parents told me it was the only time I was quiet, when I was drawing my pictures.” Then, a year ago, while drinking and doodling in a bar on Times Square, he was approached by a man who offered to buy him a drink. “To be honest with you, I thought he was hitting on me so I said, ‘Sure! But let me tell you about my wife and kids first,” Gallagher jokes. But the man, Thomas Kennon, was an art collector and what he was interested in was Gallagher’s drawing. “He told me my style was like Henri Matisse, and I said ‘Who’s that?’ I had one art class in high school and I got a D. But he convinced me that I had a talent worth exploring.”

It hadn’t been the first time he’d been told he had artistic ability. His wife, Trisha, to prove to him that his artwork was good, handed him his first sketch book in 1995 and forced him to promise to stop throwing away everything he drew. Then a gallery owner in Louisville offered to help him put on a show. When he returned to Louisville from New York, he finally took her up on it.

Today, one of his most popular works, an oil pastel drawing called “Bryn Mawr Woman” hangs in the Speed Art Museum in Louisville. Or rather, it did until this week. On Friday, April 6, you can see the haunting figure and a number of Gallagher’s other works at Milk Boy Coffee, 2 E. Lancaster Avenue, in Ardmore, [www.milkboycoffee.com] the second of two shows he’s had in the Philadelphia area in the space of a month.

It’s been an amazing ride for a man who calls himself a “reluctant artist.” Accidental is more like it. “Someone asked me the other day what my style was and I said, ‘I use my fingers.’ I really don’t know what I’m doing,” he confesses. “It was the gallery owner who suggested that I try using oil pastels and I didn’t even know what they were. I got some and my seven-year-old son, Cole, taught me how to use them. The truth is I feel like Forrest Gump. Because all these wonderful things are happening to me and I’m just enjoying it.”

Growing up on the Main Line (“right near the railroad tracks, so technically, it was on the other side of the tracks”) Gallagher couldn’t have imagined that one day he would one day be rubbing shoulders with presidents, governors, lions of industry, and Penthouse girls, as he has this year. “I recently met Governor Rendell and gave him a painting of his wife Midge,” says Gallagher. “And I also met Barack Obama at a fundraiser in Louisville. I did a portrait of his wife, Michelle, which he wasn’t able to accept because of campaign funding laws. But the Obama event really was a big deal. I got a lot of positive feedback there.”

His humble beginnings never presaged anything like this. From the age of 10, Gallagher worked with his father and uncles, all of whom were gardeners. (One uncle is Vince Gallagher, a well-known local Irish musician and radio personality who is president of the Irish Center.) “Pretty much every male figure in my life was a gardener on the Main Line. I used to stand in the back of the truck, going from lawn to lawn, something I would never do with my kids today,” he laughs. “They would throw me in a bed of weeds and I’d be pulling and raking. I grew to hate it, but now I love gardening.” Every other summer, he spent in Ireland, in Creeslough and Ardara in County Donegal, where his parents grew up. “I’m really proud of everything they accomplished here,” he says. “They worked really hard to put me and my brother, John, through school.”

The ebullient Gallagher has put his recruiting business on hold while he explores the reach of his artistic endeavors. He’s been encouraged by his reception by gallery owners and collectors who haven’t blinked at his four-figure prices. But it’s the response of ordinary people that have left a lasting impression. At a show in early March at Liberties Restaurant and Bar [www.libertiesrestaurant.com] in the Northern Liberties section of the city, he recalls a man who was taken with one of his pastels, called “The Ghost Story.” “It’s about running into your past,” Gallagher explains. “The guy, a plumber, asked me what it meant and I asked him what he thought the story was and he nailed it. When I looked at him, he was crying. It hit me later that something I created made a grown man cry. It’s powerful.”

This new turn his life has taken, he says, “is a wave of some kind. I said to my wife, ‘Let’s ride this through this show in my hometown and see what happens.’ I’ll give it my best, honest shot. Whatever happens, I can always say I gave it my best swing at the ball. But I’ll always continue to paint. Since I started, I’ve gone off my blood pressure medicine and I’ve never been happier. It’s surreal that I’m coming home for an art show. I coming home and I keep expecting to get hit by a SEPTA bus,” he laughs. ”People say that’s the Irish in me.”

To see some of Pat Gallagher’s works, view our photo essay, pictures supplied by the artist himself. You can visit even more of his art at his Web site www.patgallagher.org.