Greer Twiss was born in 1937 and he studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts in the 1950s. He became interested in cast metals and, in 1965, he was awarded a QEII Arts Council Travel Grant to travel to Britain and Europe to study the lost-wax process. Twiss works in a number of media including lead and sheet galvanised iron, and cast bronze. Twiss’ work is included regularly in group and solo exhibitions throughout New Zealand and overseas. He has been the subject of two retrospective exhibitions; one organised by the City Gallery Wellington and the other by the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. His work is included in all major public and many private collections in New Zealand including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. He is also represented in numerous international collections. Twiss has undertaken a number of large-scale commissioned works, including one of the largest and most important early contemporary public sculpture commissions, the large untitled bronze work for Karangahape Road commissioned by the Auckland City Council in 1968. He participated in the Sculpture Park developed for the Seoul Olympics in 1988. In the 1990s he completed a number of installation works exhibited in private sculpture collections and in major public galleries, and in 2004 made a large public work for the Auckland City Sculpture Trust, Flight Trainer for Albatross. His work features in publications on New Zealand art and sculpture, and a major monograph was published by Ron Sang in 2014. Twiss had a long career teaching at the University of Auckland, where he was an Associate Professor at the Elam School of Fine Arts, becoming Head of Sculpture in 1974. He retired from the school in 1998, was made an ONZM for Sculpture in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2002 and received an Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2011.