A Diligent Daily Run

Graeme Todd (1962 - )

Acrylic, ink and varnish on MDF

1999

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: Belgium
    City: Brussels
    Place: British Embassy, UK representation to the EU & UK delegation to NATO

    The image of a landscape of pine trees and snow-covered houses nestled in snowy slopes appears like a dream. The surface of the painting is dashed with a series of vertical lines: long black lines curl up, frond-like, at the ends; fainter lines are dotted in white; while narrow pointed forms in luminous yellows and greens appear to drop from the sky.


    This painting is one of several works made by Todd in the late 1990s in which he explored the relationship between landscape and monochromatic painting. Employing a laborious technique, he uses a variety of materials, building incremental layers of oil, acrylic, ink and pastel. He incorporates a layer of varnish in between, thus giving his work a glossy, almost surreal-like quality. The artistic influences on Todd’s work are eclectic: from the ambiguous compositional planes of Surrealist artists like Yves Tanguy; to 19th-century Romanticist painting; through to the Japanese art of lacquering. In both Japanese and Chinese traditional landscape painting, it is a common feature that spaces and voids hold as much significance as objects. In a similar fashion, Todd’s landscapes play with our ideas of spatial awareness and boundaries between real and imagined places.


  • About the artist
    Born in Glasgow, Graeme Todd now lives and works in Dunbar, Scotland. He studied painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and design at Dundee College. His first major solo show was held in 2000 at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh and he has exhibited in many group and solo exhibitions in the UK and abroad since. In 2008 his work was nominated for the Sovereign European Art Prize. A lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art, Todd’s work can also be found in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.
  • Explore
    Places
    Subjects
    running, abstract, landscape C20th
    Materials & Techniques
    acrylic (paint), MDF, varnish, ink, acrylic painting
  • Details
    Artist
    Graeme Todd (1962 - )
    Title
    A Diligent Daily Run
    Date
    1999
    Medium
    Acrylic, ink and varnish on MDF
    Dimensions
    height: 122.00 cm, width: 150.00 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from the Andrew Mummery Gallery, October 2000
    Inscription
    none
    GAC number
    17506