Born in Dublin, Rowan Gillespie spent the first nine years of his life in Cyprus. At sixteen he attended the York School of Art moving the following year to Kingston College of Art, London and later to Statens Kunstskole, Oslo.
Working exclusively in bronze, an early yet recurrent them in his work (based on an Ancient Greek story by the philosopher Palamas), was of a figure clinging to a ladder to seek the elusive light. Since then many characters and ideas drawn from different sources have dev
eloped and appeared consistently in Gillespie’s work including embryonic forms, classical heroes, captive figures and dancing couples. They are all part of what the sculptor calls his “Family of People”. Some display dramatic, striking posture while others stand statuesquely still. Conceptually and manifestly, much of his work has, in varying degrees, been influenced by the paintings of Edward Munch, with whose work the artist became familiar while lecturing at the Munch Museum in the mid 1970s.
Gillespie works rapidly on a small scale. He rarely makes drawings, but prefers the immediate tangibility and three dimensional quality of wax or clay. More recently, he has begun to focus on large scale site-specific works. All his bronzes display texture and rigorous modelling as though the molten bronze has been worked by hand. Because he has his own foundry Gillespie enjoys the facility for technical experimentation with established techniques.
He exhibits regularly in Ireland and has had numerous exhibitions internationally in locations including Cannes, Oslo, Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles and Miami.
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