Career
She is represented by the Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto. Shortly after graduating from the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University), Tod was included in the exhibition YYZ Monumenta in 1982, an exhibition that spread over six spaces in Toronto"s Queen Street West neighbourhood: American Red Cross, Gallery 76, Grunwald Gallery, Mercer Union, Studio 620, and YYZ Artists" Outlet. This exhibition became a pivotal moment for the young painter"s career, launching her "from relative obscurity of the Queen Street West artist-run centres into considerable national attention." Tod is among a group of artists working in Toronto in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the Queen Street West neighbourhood, where Canadian artists across the country migrated, creating an energetic art community in the city.
She has become known for her figurative paintings from photographs, using irony to challenge stereotypes, expose vulnerabilities and unsettle assumptions about women, race and social status.
Her technical range as a painter was acknowledged early in her career and she uses her skill to surprise viewers by juxtaposing incongruous objects with well-executed representational images. In his review of Tod"s 2000 exhibition entitled "The Republic of Private" at Toronto"s Sable-Castelli Gallery, Globe and Mail art critic Gary Michael Dault described Tod"s paintings as "dizzying realism" with "high sensuous, meditative brushwork that abstracts its subject at the very same time as it nails it down." Tod lectures at the Visual Studies program at the University of Toronto.
Hamilton, Ontario, Art Gallery of Hamilton Kingston, Ontario, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen"s University Lethbridge, Bachelor of Arts, University of Lethbridge Montreal, Queen's Counsel, Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University Montreal, Queen's Counsel, Musée d"art contemporain de Montréal Oakville, Ontario, Oakville Galleries Oshawa, Ontario, McLaughlin Art Gallery Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Council Art Bank Ottawa, Ontario, House of Commons, Government of Canada Ottawa, Ontario, National Gallery of Canada Sarnia, Ontario, Sarnia Public Library Sudbury, Ontario, Laurentian University and Art Centre Toronto, Ontario, Art Gallery of Ontario Toronto, Ontario, Hart House, University of Toronto Vancouver, British Columbia, Vancouver Art Gallery.