Alan Todd
Adelaide, south Australia
Age 76
What keeps you excited in the studio?
Endless development of ideas
Looking back at your trajectory as an artist, how would you say your work has developed?
I have followed a number of themes or ideas for the last 50 years moving between two and three dimensional forms. This has included mediums such as sculpture, painting and contemporary dance but it is the ideas that are important and the idea always comes first. Development often assumes a linear progression towards a goal. Everything I do works in parallel with no specific goal, building on sensory experience.
What role do you think the artist has in today’s society?
I doubt that the artist has a specific role today. For most of the last century, art has been produced as a closed experience. The assumption that the audience has a role to play in the process is fallacious. If someone connects with a work of art it is because it triggers a memory or response but if it does not make that connection then that is not the fault of the work or the artist. Suggestions that art and the artist define culture can be true where specific reference is made to time or event as in the case of art created as propaganda or social comment but essentailly the artist works alone.
What’s the most important advice you could give to an aspiring artist?
Work every hour available and don’t listen to people who don’t know what they are talking about but ‘know what they like’. The artist is the only person qualified to judge thew worth of their own work.
Does age matter in art? Why or why not?
One of the commonest questions at art openings or in magazine surveys is to ask when the artist started followed by how long a work took to complete. Both questions are based upon the idea that there is an anecdote which will explain a work. Neither are valid. The only difference between someone starting out at a young age and someone working at 80 is experience. What you learn as you get older is what not to waste your time on and how to focus the time you have.
What can we look forward to from you next?
I am currently pursuing one the themes I first worked with in the late 1960s where the aesthetic of the gesture moves between two and three dimensional forms. The results will form part of what will be my 10th exhibition this year
Is there anything else you would like to share about being an artist later in life?
Work an eight hour day, read and draw.
http://www.alantoddvisualartist.com
@alantoddvisualartist
