FRL’s interview with Theodore Gillick

eeting with Theodore Gillick, artist and sculptor, was the highlight of my day at Olympia.  His inspirational work pulled me in to take a closer look and I was not disappointed. 

Where does your inspiration come from?
It would be nice to tell you that ideas come to me in dreams, and materialise before my eyes while I am striding across the open moors.  Sometimes the ideas are brief flashes of insight and understanding, but sculpture is a slow art-form with short spells of modelling in between tedious amounts of logistics, paperwork and day to day necessity so that, in the main.  Those flashes come at any time, usually when I can't do anything about it, so I tack the idea onto a list of works in my head and carry it around until I finally get into the studio.  I know what my next 8 or ten works are going to be.  Some of them I have held onto for several years; others — if I think they are strong — get wedged in at the or towards the top of the list.  Inspiration is the thrilling, rapid bit that quickens the spirit.  Making the idea in 3D is the test of difference between dreamer and artist.

Does your home and surroundings influence how you work?
In a sense, yes it does.  I am lucky to live in a beautiful part of the coutry on the Rutland-Lincolnshire border in a particularly beautiful place with an old, truely beautiful, romantic studio. There is a decent river at the bottom of the garden, and wherever there is water nature in abundance pours out.  There is inspiration here.  It is also a space where I prepare to sculpt, an activity that is so different from everyday life and one that can so quickly undo forever one or two touches of brilliance that make the clay sing that it takes quite a bit of preparation and mental adjustment.  It is good to watch the bees in the borders and procrastinate with some gardening tool while running through yesterdays work, and building up a head of steam.  And then once you are at it the surroundings are of no importance at all.  It is like taking someone to bed: yes, the setting creates the mood, frames the action, prepares the players, but once one descends to kissing vision who cares if the bed is straw or down?

Your family are all artistic, why do you think you all followed careers in the arts? How do your children view your passion? You have a lineage of artists within your family, in your view is this nurture or nature and have your children shown similar artistic flare for the arts?
Bad parenting.  If my parents had any idea at all on raising balanced children I would be in a proper job rather than playing with mud at the age of nearly 40.  They themselves are artists, as are my cousins and relatives in almost all directions, as well as into the past and, looking at my own children and those of my extended family, it seems set to continue.  It is quite right to wallow in ones extended artistic lineage, and equally right to identify the root cause.  I blame my parents and I know for sure my children will blame me.

You studies Science in at Aberdeen university? is there any connection at all to what you studied to what you do now as an artist?? what brought you back in to sculpting?
Coming back to sculpting was like an alcoholic falling off the wagon.  I did endeavour to be a scientist, got a good degree, won some awards, a scholarship, got a job in a research institute, wrote some well received papers, was lining up for a PhD, but the scholarship led me to Jerusalem, and Jerusalem into the company of a girl and the girl into the company of a lesbian potter, and the lesbian potter into the company of grey, slippery earthenware clay and thenceforth all my studies were undone.  Absolute 360 degree mental engagement. Complete joy. There is the first connection:  without science I would not have been led into the company of clay.  Secondly, would I still be sculpting if I had not had the benefit of an incredibly rigorous degree?  Almost certainly not.  It taught me how to think, it shoved open all the limited doors of my brain, and it taught me how to study.  Did it require a change in temperament and outlook to switch from one to the other?  I don’t think so.  I botanised like I sculpt and vice versa, not satisfied until I have a 3D understanding of the micro and macro world about me.  I may sculpt a stag, but I can tell you all about the calcium ion release that contracts the follicles arrector pili at the base of its every hair.


Who trained or mentored you? how much of what you do is self taught?
Post science, and with little faith in conceptual methods at conventional art schools, I put myself through stone masonry college in order to be taught how to carve by truly skilled craftsmen with a deep knowledge of form, albeit for buildings.  Carving is both the foundation and the pinnacle of sculpture.  It requires that you have complete understanding and perfected method before you even begin, and the finished item reperesents a flawless approach to the a finished surface.  It may not look like much, but you musn’t have knocked anything off between start and stop. So that’s where I began.  I spent a while working from old books in my fathers studio and he guided me, but otherwise I have not been trained or mentored in modelling.  There have been several changes in my work over the years and these represent my great discoveries and breakthroughs as my language grows and develops.  I can point out on several of my sculptures where exactly these eureka moments happened.

how long does it typically take you from start to finish to complete a piece?
Anything from a few hours to several months.  I am working on a carving at the moment that has been underway for two years, but my fighting lions were the most exhausting rush of fluid modelling, start to almost complete in five hours.
And do you stop and start and work on others along side or concentrate on once piece or collection?
Normally I work one piece with a rush of clarity and vigour and lay down the foundations very quickly.  At the end of the day I cover it up in wet cloths and plastic to keep it wet and return to it a week or so later.  I might have four of five pieces on the turntables at any one time and I move from one to the other.  I almost always uncover the first take to find an abomination where I thought I had left a masterpiece.  That’s what comes of working too late.

How organised are you in your work process?
Quite organised, and the idea is to fall into some sort of pattern or rhythm for days on end.  Hardly ever happens though.  In general days are very full, and rather more like being a farmer than an office worker:  there is a general plan and schedule for the whole year, whole unit, and each parcel but to a degree farmers have to roll with the weather and flex around what the heavens and markets send them and change everything when the stock and crops have a different plan.  Same here:  I have to roll with various influences and necessities.  For both I suspect that there are never enough days in the week.

How focused are you and how do you focus your self on your work?
I think my wife would say that the verb ‘focused’ is not quite strong enough.  I do very little other than think sculpture.


Your pieces clearly demonstrate your passion for nature and wildlife, how does your work differ from sentimental animal lovers work of art?
A passion for wildlife and nature, yes, but above all I have a passion for life.  Not in the sense of someone who spends their time bungee jumping and getting as many thrills and experiences in as possible, but that I think it is strange, bewildering and wonderful to be conscious.  I am like most other people in that I come alive when I am most aware of life’s brevity, I am thrilled by its deep beauty, shaken by its uncertainty, pains and pleasures.  As an artist, the things I see, am delighted and sometimes humbled by, must be described.  I would not condemn any attempt by another human to describe a thing with their hands or voice.  The difference between sentimental artworks, as you call them, and a really good, ‘future proof’ piece of work is depth of understanding and skill in describing both the object and the effect it has on you.  Time will tell if I have enough of either.