Rowan Gillespie

Rowan Fergus Meredith Gillespie (born 1953) is an Irish bronze casting sculptor of international renown. Born in Dublin to Irish parents, Gillespie spent his formative years in Cyprus

His singular and often exhausting modus operandi involves taking the work through from conception to creation, entirely unassisted in his purpose-built bronze casting foundry at Clonlea, in Blackrock. This is one of the things that make him unique among the bronze casting fraternity.

Influenced by the sculptor Henry Moore and the painter Edvard Munch, Gillespie uses the lost wax casting process to portray the whole gamut of human emotions. Having worked almost exclusively on site specific art since 1996, Gillespie's public works can be found in his native Ireland, Europe, the USA and Canada.

Background

Rowan's father, Jack Gillespie was a medical doctor and his mother, Moira, was the daughter of James Creed Meredith, the translator of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgement, Supreme Court of Ireland Judge and member of the Irish Volunteers movement. According to Gillespie's official biographer Roger Kohn, the Irish sculptor's latest work, Proclamation, which is situated across the road from the Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, was created in memory of both the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and of his Grandfather's dream of a Utopian society.