The journey to my career as a figurative sculptor started in the theater. I am professionally trained as an actress and I worked in the professional theater for six years. The start of a family and the raising of children curtailed my theater career and I turned my interests towards the visual arts. I began with collage and then ceramics. I loved the feel of the clay and the immediacy of expression. After spending some years potting, I started to sculpt with the clay and the clay pots turned to faces and the faces to figures. I then began sculpting for bronze casting. I started with small figures and portrait busts, until today where I sculpt life and larger than life-size figures. Most of my work is commissioned. I have handled large, multi-figure sculpture projects to small personal sculpts. The thrust of my work has always been to portray life as it is lived, with neither excessive sentimentality nor hollow heroism. I delight in the portrayal of humans in their infinite possibilities.

– Gwendolyn Gillen