A Diligent Daily Run
Acrylic, ink and varnish on MDF
1999-
About the work
- Location
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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.
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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.
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Explore
- Places
- Subjects
- running, abstract, landscape C20th
- Materials & Techniques
- acrylic (paint), MDF, varnish, ink, acrylic painting
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Details
- Artist
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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