Graeme Todd | 23 September - 5 November 2023

It is an honour for the Royal Scottish Academy to present The Dream Lasted Well Into The Evening, the first posthumous exhibition of Graeme Todd RSA’s work since his untimely death in 2022.

In 1979, at the age of 17, Graeme moved from his hometown of Cumbernauld to Dundee to study painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. After his post-graduate studies he relocated to Edinburgh as a recipient of the John Florent Stone Scholarship at Edinburgh College of Art (ECA). This success secured him a position as lecturer in Drawing and Painting at ECA, where he became regarded as one of the most inspirational painting tutors of the last thirty years. His influence is witnessed every year with painting graduates across Scotland tapping into the beautiful, cosmic world he created.

Graeme exhibited continuously throughout his years of teaching with solo shows across the UK, Europe, USA and Japan, with work included within major group shows of painting from Los Angeles to Tokyo.

During 2007 to 2010 Graeme also collaborated with his wife, the artist and lecturer Liz Adamson, curating several notable exhibitions and projects as co-directors of Polarcap Contemporary Arts Project. These shows enabled him to share the valuable experiences he had gained as an international artist. They allowed him to offer generous opportunities and, just as importantly for him, bring together a multi-generational peer group of artists, designers and musicians.

Election to the Royal Scottish Academy in August 2014 enabled Graeme to continue his curatorial interests. He became a regular contributor to RSA’s exhibition programme, serving on the Exhibition Committee and on the Hanging and Arrangement Committees for the RSA Annual and New Contemporaries exhibitions. In 2020, he was elected Convenor of the 194th Annual Exhibition, overseeing a challenging last-minute move to an online exhibition due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Paintings in this exhibition have been carefully selected from the archive of Graeme’s studio by Liz Adamson and curator Andrew Mummery, demonstrating the breadth of Graeme's talent.

Graeme’s devotional art practice sought the language of painting at its most potent level, revealing to us a world we know exists but only on the periphery of our imagination and vision. His work talks of and talks to painting across millennia. His jewel-like surfaces and images are an amalgamation of the transformative energy of the here and now (improvisation), folding into deep time and dream time, producing a new lapidarian phenomenon. Paintings reinventing and recovering our sense of the sacred. Not treasures blasted from rocks, broken off cliffs, stolen from others, exchanged for wealth, hidden under beds. Treasures, brought back through wisdom, love, curiosity, intellect, ear and eye. Revealed with the soft strokes of a brush. Stars going on. Caves being opened. Rivers placed over rock formations to dry. Space deepening. Time deepening. Our souls nourished. An exquisite conversation with one of our countries most original artists and thinkers.

Edward Summerton RSA,
August 2023

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Graeme Todd: The Dream Lasted Well Into The Evening

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