Theodore Gillick was born an identical twin in 1972 and, against the flow of his close-knit and entirely artistic family studied science at Aberdeen University. A scholarship to the University Botanical Gardens in Jerusalem followed where a friend and painter introduced him to sculpture. Returning to Britain he consulted on deer management and grazing throughout Scotland and her Islands for the Macaulay Research Institute in Aberdeen and the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology in Banchory but finally quit to retrain in sculpture and stone carving at Bath College, where he won the Peter Greening Prize.
Theodore's family has been involved professionally in the arts for three generations. Among the poets, actresses, illustrators, dancers, painters, architects, designers and craftsmen of his immediate and extended family A family of artists are Earnest Gillick (1874-1951), responsible for figures on the V&A façade, the Cenotaph in Glasgow, among many other works both here and abroad, and Mary Gillick (1881 - 1965), master practitioner of relief sculpture, responsible for the portrait and design of the pre-decimal coinage among other fine secular and ecclesiastical works.
His cousin, Liam Gillick, is a conceptual sculptor and a figure of the Britart movement; his twin brother James is a sought after portrait, still life and figure painter.
It is within this extended family tradition of professional artists, designers and makers that Theodore grew up and was trained, and it forms the bedrock of his work. He is married and has five fabulous children.