Stephen Todd

I am an established Sheffield based artist working across landscape; seascape; the human form and an historical based research. I use painting, drawing, printmaking and photographic images as the main methods and means for my work. I am interested in the deliberateness of making marks on a surface, including the use of text whether legible or not; and the nature of the medium I am using i.e. a painting needs to hold within it the characteristics of paint itself, its texture, fluidity etc.. The final pieces, hopefully, have a strong sense of marks and lines and a direct use of colour. Drawing is an essential part of my work, charcoal an important medium and life drawing a basic discipline. I started life drawing at Morley College, London, in 1980 under the inspiration of John Epstein and have continued to develop my work in an instinctive and free approach. The contradiction between a static figure and a drawing full of movement and force is something that interests me. The historical based research I undertake provides a means for understanding the landscape. I am interested in both how past events are presented to us through the landscape and other related evidence and how this can be represented back to us to influence what we think or believe. The "construction of facts". I have undertaken research in classical sites of Greece and Turkey as well as the Roman Rig (South Yorkshire), and various Neolithic sites including Arbor Low and Woodhenge. A current focus for my work is Spurn Head and the Humber Estuary, the North Sea coast and "English Seas". I hope I bring this thoughtful approach into the range of work I undertake. However, my work is primarily figurative in its inspiration and ultimately I seek to make pieces that have an aesthetic quality and allow the viewer to interpret into them their own thoughts and senses.