Emma Tod

(UK; born 1966)

Tod’s work explores the materiality of paint in a period of digital image circulation, with its accelerating speeds of transmission and shared simultaneous attention deficit. Her work negotiates this shift through stillness and ambiguity; peripheral events, fleeting moments, and chance encounters are brought to the centre and visual fragments taken from the internet, TV, and art history are playfully recombined and erased.

Layers of transparent glazes are assiduously built up to create a shallow depth of field that replicates the luminosity of the screen. Here, figurative and non-figurative elements meet, collide, and are altered by each other. Fluctuating areas of colour and bodies of paint are expanded and foregrounded. Ambiguity invites us to speculate, to create meaning playfully, offering a counterpoint to the directed and surveilled nature of our digital lives.

Colour Field

To be unveiled at Expo Chicago 2026 are a series of photographs, which hitherto would be intended as source material for Tod’s painting. They proffer a key to her normal practice while retaining a presence on their own terms.

**Colour field (Clerodendrum bungei II)** 2026
Archival pigment print; 58.2 x 49.5 cm
Framed (AR/UV) Edition of 3

**Colour field (Oxalis triangularis)** 2026
Archival pigment print; 58.2 x 49.5 cm
Framed (AR/UV) Edition of 3

**Colour field (Clerodendrum bungei III)** 2026
Archival pigment print; 58.2 x 49.5 cm
Framed (AR/UV) Edition of 3

**Colour field (Clerodendrum bungei IV)** 2026
Archival pigment print; 58.2 x 49.5 cm
Framed (AR/UV) Edition of 3

**Colour field (Clerodendrum bungei V)** 2026
Archival pigment print; 58.2 x 49.5 cm
Framed (AR/UV) Edition of 3

**Colour field (Clerodendrum bungei I)** 2026
Archival pigment print; 58.2 x 49.5 cm
Framed (AR/UV) Edition of 3

**Colour field (Hypericum)** 2026
Archival pigment print; 58.2 x 49.5 cm
Framed (AR/UV) Edition of 3

Paintings

Emma Tod’s paintings might be described as an antidote to the digital experience, giving us back a sense of what we scroll past: time. Yet her work also embraces its aesthetic, each painterly swatch a paean to high saturation and luminous intensity. Meticulously constructed from layer upon layer of oil paint, these works seem to hold fragments of time itself: glimpses rescued from the blur of capture, or resurrected at high zoom from digital anonymity….…Tod’s practice negotiates not only the overwhelming speeds of image circulation but also the unseen signals, forces and fields that shape our world.

Rebecca Geldard 2025

**I am wonder I (after Dara Birnbaum)** 2025
Oil on linen; 30 x 35 cm
Framed

**I am wonder II (after Dara Birnbaum)** 2025
Oil on linen; 30 x 35 cm
Framed

**Light years (427.09 parts per million)** 2025
Oil on cradled wooden panel; 70 x 60 cm

**Soft heavy (428.5 parts per million)** 2026
Oil on cradled aluminium panel; 70 x 60 cm

**Red shift (427.09 parts per million)** 2025
Oil on cradled wooden panel; 70 x 60 cm

**Burner** 2023 SOLD
Oil on linen; 35 x 30 cm
Framed

Prices available on request.