Gise Trauttmansdorff

I have been working in 3 dimensional media as long as I can remember. I was trained by architect parents from an early age to carefully observe and reproduce what we encountered on many travels in Europe. For me, the biggest fascination was always to look at people, especially at their faces.
Life long training and a love and interest for people led me to photography and drawing. However, my explorations led to me creating likenesses of the human face in three dimensions. The desire to capture their soul, personality, and a certain mood in their likeness never stops exciting and challenging me. Every face is a combination of the inside world behind it and its surroundings. In a portrait I strive to give a glimpse of that duality. Since words have always been a struggle for me I have finally found my medium, in the hope that it speaks for itself.

Gise is a sculptor with a background in architecture which is evident in the exquisite technical detail that she puts into each piece. In her work she relies on manipulating space and form through composition and is interested in exploring the poetic relationship between inner and outer space through open and closed forms, and the rhythm of light and shadow. This duality is extended to the surface detail by juxtaposing textures and colours and fragility and coarseness. Gise has an appreciation for weathered, aged surfaces and subtle colour and more conceptually a desire to create a sense of memory through them.

For her works the artist carefully and slowly hand builds each form from a clay slab so that no two pieces are ever the same. The resulting effect allows each piece to reveal the history of its process and is intended to evoke a sense of discovery.

Having worked with clay for over 20 years Gise’s focus is always on pushing the material and the Raku firing method to new limits.

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