Born 1945 in Los Angeles, California.

In 1965 he attended UCLA and studied painting and drawing with David Hockney, Alfred Leslie, Jan Stussy, Sam Amato & Richard Diebenkorn.

Michael has studied painting with Edgar Ewing and Keith Crown at USC form 1965 through 1967.

In 1966 Michael was awarded a fellowship to Yale University School of Music and Art. He studied with George Wardlaw, Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Mangold, Walker Evans and Knox Martin. Michael received his BFA from the University of Southern California in 1968.

Later, Michael moved to the East Coast, where he received his MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT. in 1970. At Yale he studied with Jack Tworkov, Lester Johnson, Bill Bailey, Bernard Chaet, Dick Lytle, Josef Albers, Al Held, Gabor Peterdi and Barbara Rose. Michael received the Eli Harwood Schless Award for Outstanding Draughtsman & Painter Class of 1970.

After that, Michael moved back to the West Coast where he taught Art History, Studio Figure Drawing and Advanced Painting at Fullerton Community College, California from 1970 through 1971. Yearning for the creative impulses of the East Coast, Michael moved yet again to Westport, Connecticut where he taught Art & Humanities at New Canaan High School part time. Along with fellow Yale colleagues' help Michael relocated Spectrum Gallery from 57th Street to Soho, New York. The Gallery was renamed 'Razor' and began to include 'non-traditional' exhibits, e.g., United Graffiti Artists and Performance Art. In 1972 Michael built a large painting studio in Westport.
He had his first of many one man shows in Soho, New York at Razor Gallery in 1974.

His first review:
"Michael Gallagher, whose paintings and drawings hang at Razor to the 14th, is not afraid to 'look' like'several abstract expressionists, including de Kooning, Twombly, Goodnough, Richenburg, Held, and Knox Martin -- and that's in one painting. Other pictures conjure up Hofmann, Tworkov, Gorky, Stella, et al. A varied ancestry, but Gallagher not only unites them successfully, he still emerges his own man. His drawings have more formal integrity and originality, they are more purely an expression of an aesthetic personality, while the paintings have that distinctly historical awareness to them. But their formulation, with its highly rhythmic choreographing of disparate forms and elements -- straight edges, loops, squiggles, drips, grids, jagged strokes, calligraphic gestures, side by side parallel structures, interwoven forms, continuous and discontinuous lines -- and especially their gala color, with baby blues jammed up against hot reds, chalky greens, bloody flesh tones, etc! ., make for fresh, vivid, and extremely likeable pictures. Some are a bit more sober and regular than this, but hardly less attractive for it."
-Peter Frank, Soho Weekly News, March 7

Michael sublet a loft on Greene St. in New York's Soho loft district in 1976, and in 1977 he began to exhibit with Louis Meisel.

In 1978 his work was included in several museum shows - Edwin Ulrich Museum, Kansas, Museum of Fine Arts, MA, Aldrich Museum, Connecticut. His first & second show at the Louis Meisel Gallery sold out before the opening, and his painting, Pralaya, 1979, was purchased by the Guggenheim Museum.

He participated in the group show, "The Reality of Illusion", which traveled to numerous museums across the United States.

Michael executed a series of large monotype collages, which was published by Fred Dorfman at Andy Warhol's studio in 1987.

In 1988 Michael moved back to the West Coast to Newport Beach, California, renting an old sail loft in Newport Beach's 'Cannery' district and converting it into a painting and printmaking studio.

Submitted by Cynthia Gallagher