The word 'palimpsest', defined as 'writing material used one or more times.something having diverse layers beneath the surface' has been used by Graham Gillmore to describe his work. It is an appropriate description for an artist whose forte lies in discombobulating linguistic interpretation; Gillmore explores physical layers by routing into Masonite board, creating smooth, glossy jewel-toned paintings, erasing the artists' physical presence while words crawl freely about, unchained by need for meaning.

Another ongoing series is built up of layers of ledger paper on canvas over which his trademark words are painted, often trapped in bubbles and connected in a web of meaningless complexity across the canvas. The documents were given to him by his accountant father, and create a 'financial and mercantile foundation (upon which) Gillmore layers the aesthetic and literary.'

A thread that runs consistently throughout Gillmore's practice is his acknowledged desire to 'debase the exalted and exalt the debased'. Examples of this willful misunderstanding can be seen in his
re-arrangement of the title of Walter Benjamin's famous text The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction as The Art of Work in the Age of Repoductive Mechanics, and in his smaller Fold-Ins where, for instance a magazine cover of the lofty Architectural Digest gets reworked as Clit.

Staggeringly beautiful and frustratingly elusive, Gillmore's paintings are filled with information yet offer no vehicle for its interpretation. 'Gillmore is bringing to the surface interpretative complexity, thereby calling art theory and the process of looking'. A viewer may seek to interpret the work, or simply absorb its sublimity.