Contemporary Visual Artist Adelaide, Abstract Art & Sculptures Studio

Thank you for visiting my website. I’m Alan Todd and I have been an artist all of my life.

I hope you find something of interest in my work and ideas. In a sense, all of my work is autobiographical. For me, art doesn’t exist in a vacuum and while instinct will play a part there is always a beginning point based upon an exploration of an idea.

SCULPTURE

I work principally in wood and steel. Industrial materals are a deliberate choice and follow in a family tradition. My father was a skilled metalworker and woodworker and I grew up surrounded by the things he made. However, while his projects were always utilitarian from furniture to toys, my sculptures are the opposite. They exist as objects in their own right.

The influences on my work are wide and varied from the monuments of the past to sculptors such as David Smith, Picasso, Brancusi, Noguchi, Nevellson, the Constructivists, Judd and contemporary installationists such as Barlow and Drew. There is hardly an artist of the last century who has not in some way influenced my thinking.

Essentially I am a constructor looking for ways to express complex ideas without losing connection to the materials. The materials come from hardware stores so commercial pine and plywood play a major role alongside a variety of plastic, rope and metal objects.

INNER SPACES

This series of works began as considerations of a visual relationship where failing eyesight becomes the medium for interpretation. ‘Seeing’ is the brain’s best guess as to what’s out there and when the encoded information stored in the synapses cannot interpet new information, lack of connection is the result.

The ideas of Conversations with my Father extended into three dimensions. Each work was about something never discussed.

I spent much of the 80s working in steel. THe Flying Figure series concerned vain hope. None of the figures was going to get off the ground. There were life-sized figures as well constructed from one millimetre steel plate. All but one has been destroyed.

.PAINTING

I began as a painter some six decades ago but while the ideas correspond to those in the sculptures, the approach to paintings has always been much more flexible and fluid. While the sculptures explore for the most part themes related to time and history, the paintings are personal and based on memory.

The extensive series ‘Conversations with my Father ‘ is ironic in that the conversations never took place. So much was never said and our lives were separated by half a world and a lack of understanding. Each painting is a moment when something happened in my life which I wish I could have shared. He never saw the paintings.