Born in a small town outside of Baltimore, Gatch studied under John Sloan and Leon Kroll at the Maryland Institute College of Art. After receiving a travel fellowship, he also studied with Cubist artist André Lhote in Paris in 1924.

His work went through three main periods. From 1927 to 1950, he created lyrical, semi-abstract paintings. In 1950 he turned to collage, and for the next ten years created strictly unemotional forms derived from nature using painted or stained canvas strips. In the final period during the last eight years of his life, Gatch created the Jurassic Series, working with stone collage and oil. He claimed, “the stone introduces the element of the accidental…contrasting the texture and timelessness of stone with the material expression of contemporary thought.”