Laird Gough (b. 1981, Richmond, Virginia)
Laird Gough is a multidisciplinary artist whose ceramics, sculpture, and painting explore the living traces of form, fragility, and gesture. Working primarily in clay and mixed media, she deliberately distorts symmetry, implants fragments, and merges broken elements with whole vessels to evoke imperfection, memory, and the body’s echo in stillness. Her work balances the intimacy of handcraft with an experimental impulse, often drawing on domestic objects, relics, and historical materials as metaphors for presence and rupture.
Gough holds a BA in History from the College of Charleston and studied art history in Florence at Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions including Through the Body (Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, 2023), Lovers (Main Projects + CommonWealth Public Art Fund, Richmond, 2025), and at galleries such as Alexander Berggruen, Object & Thing (LongHouse Reserve), and Greenwich House Pottery.
She has participated in residencies and study programs at the New York Academy of Art (2024), Center for the Study of Figurative Ceramics at Penland (2023), and maintained a multi-year affiliation with Greenwich House Pottery (2020–2024).
Her work has drawn attention in publications such as Vogue (“Vase Value”), Town & Country (“The Glazed Age”), and Yo Dona / El Mundo (“Valiosa Esencia Terrenal”).
Gough lives and works between New York City and Charlottesville, Virginia.