The Day I Spent With Artist Geoff Todd

Sometimes the most interesting things happen because you ask a question you probably weren't supposed to ask.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting at the Wheat, Wine and Whiskey bar in Collingwood when the owner, Remy, introduced me to a man called Peter Kelly.

We started talking, as you do, and I discovered that Peter was an art collector who lived just around the corner. Then he mentioned that he collected the work of Australian artist Geoff Todd.

I immediately said, “You have to lfgalleryet me come over and see your art collection. Please.”ƒ

He said yes.

Fifteen minutes later, I was walking through his front door.

I spent the next hour roaming around Peter's home, looking at an extraordinary collection of art, including more Geoff Todd paintings than I could count. Peter graciously allowed me to film while I was there, so afterwards I put together a reel and shared it on Instagram.

That reel received around two and a half thousand views overnight.

I tagged Geoff and invited him to collaborate on the post.

He said yes.

And that could quite easily have been the end of the story but it wasn't.

*** Click the image below to watch the reel on instagram 
Follow Geoff Todd on Instagram | Geoff's website

One Question Led to Another Door

Peter and Geoff have known each other for around 30 years and after the reel went out, the two of them spoke.

The next thing I knew, Geoff had suggested Peter and I come and spend the day with him and his wife, Janette, who is also an artist.

So the following week, that's exactly what we did.

Peter actually stayed at my house the night before. We sat around the fire, ate dinner and talked for hours. Art, life, relationships, where we both are at this stage of our lives. I think we may have solved most of the world's problems by the time we finally went to bed.

The next morning, we got in the car and drove for a couple of hours to spend the day with Geoff and Janette.

What strikes me now is how completely unplanned all of this was.

There was no networking strategy.

I wasn't trying to engineer an introduction to Geoff Todd.

I'd met someone interesting in a bar, discovered he had an art collection I desperately wanted to see and asked if I could see it.

Everything else came from that.

Inside an Artist's World

Geoff and Janette could not have been more welcoming.

Their home and studios are inside an old pub called the Terminus. Downstairs is where they work, with their studios and art storage, and upstairs is where they live.

Geoff walked me through the entire place.

I saw where he paints. I wandered amongst the work. I saw paintings hanging, paintings stored away and the environment in which all of this work has been created.

There is something very different about seeing an artist's work in the place where it's actually made.

We tend to encounter established artists once the work has left them.

We see the exhibitions, the catalogues and the finished paintings hanging beautifully on gallery walls.

But a studio is different.

A studio lets you see a little of the human being behind the work.

Eventually we went upstairs, where Janette had made us a beautiful lunch of quiche, salad and fresh sourdough bread and we talked.

After lunch we went downstairs again and Geoff and Janette allowed me to film them. Geoff answered my questions and later walked us down the main street to visit a gallery where I could see more work.

Before we left, he gave me two of his coffee-table books and signed them for me.

It was an incredibly generous day.

Not simply because of what I was shown, but because of the time we were given.

The Painting Should Tell You

At one point I asked Geoff something I've wondered about many times myself.

“How do you know when a painting is finished?”

His answer was:

The painting should tell you. Unless you're listening, it's the most difficult part for an artist. Perhaps I'm talking about instinct.

I've thought about that ever since because I think he's right.

There comes a point where technique can only take you so far. You can learn composition. You can understand colour. You can learn materials and processes and all the practical things involved in making a painting.

But there's another conversation happening between you and the work and you have to be quiet enough to hear it.

I think that's something we develop over time. Not simply the ability to paint, but the ability to trust ourselves enough to recognise when the work is telling us something.

Then He Talked About My Work

Perhaps the most encouraging moment of the day came when Geoff talked to me about my own art.

He had taken the time to look at my Scars of a Woman collection. 

More importantly, he'd taken the time to read the stories behind it.

He told me that he found the collection interesting and beautiful and spoke about the fact that I hadn't simply painted obvious scars on women's bodies. There was a story and meaning behind the work, which gave it something deeper.

I'm paraphrasing him here rather than quoting him because what stayed with me wasn't the precise sentence.

It was the fact that he understood what I was trying to do.

That mattered enormously to me.

Scars of a Woman has never really been about scars.

The scars are the doorway.

The work is about what women carry, what our bodies remember, what we've survived, what changes us and what remains.

For someone with Geoff's experience to look beyond the surface of those paintings, read the stories and recognise the intention underneath them was incredibly encouraging.

Not because I needed someone else to tell me the work was good.

But because what I was trying to communicate had reached him and it showed me I was on the right track.

I Never Felt Like I Didn't Belong There

Something else occurred to me after the day was over.

At no point did I have one of those How the hell did I end up here? moments.

I wasn't intimidated.

I didn't feel as though I was an outsider who'd somehow managed to gain access to a world I wasn't supposed to be in.

I felt completely at home.

That's not because I consider myself equal to Geoff in terms of career or experience. He's had decades to build the body of work and reputation he has today.

It's something much simpler than that.

I don't tend to put people on pedestals. I like people and I'm curious about them.

And when I'm interested in someone, I want to know what they think, how they work, what they've learned and what sits underneath the public version of who they are.

I think that allows me to walk into rooms without first deciding I'm not important enough to be there.

And perhaps there's something in that.

The Other Unexpected Gift Was Peter

There's another part of this story that has almost nothing to do with Geoff.

Peter and I have become friends.

Think about that for a moment.

I'd walked into a bar and met this man completely by chance. Within 15 minutes I was wandering through his home looking at his art collection.

Not long afterwards he was staying at my house.

We sat around the fire talking until late. We drove for two hours together to see Geoff and talked the entire way. We spent this extraordinary day together, then talked for another two hours on the drive home.

When we got back to Melbourne, we returned to the same pub where we'd originally met and told the owner about our adventure.

Then I went back to Peter's house, cooked dinner in his kitchen and we talked into the wee hours about everything we'd experienced.

Art brought us together.

But somewhere along the way, it became about much more than art.

I love that.

I've Been Missing Great Conversations

Over the course of my career, I've been a successful podcaster. I started podcasting in 2010 and have produced five different podcast shows over the years. (There's a point here)

It's something I've really missed.

Not necessarily the production side of it. Podcasting takes an enormous amount of work and the medium has changed considerably since I first started. I've never really felt the pull to go back and create another show just for the sake of podcasting again.

What I hadn't realised until my day with Geoff was what I'd actually been missing.

The conversations.

I've missed sitting with interesting people and being able to ask the questions I'm genuinely curious about. I've missed the places a conversation can go when you give it enough room. I've missed listening to someone's story and discovering the things you would never learn from reading their biography or looking at their work online.

And suddenly this three-minute reel has given me some insight into how I might capture that again without having to build an entire podcast around it.

It's much simpler.

Spend time with an artist. Visit their studio. Look at their work. Eat with them. Ask questions. Film some of it.

Then take the most interesting few minutes and share them.

The response to the reels with Peter and Geoff has shown me that other people are curious about these conversations too.

And perhaps that's where this leads next.

I Want to Sit at More Artists' Tables

I want to meet more artists who have built extraordinary bodies of work.

I want to visit their studios, see where they work and hear about the lives behind the paintings. I want to ask them the questions that occur to me while I'm standing in front of their work, rather than arrive with a list of carefully rehearsed interview questions.

I want to eat meals with them. Talk about art and life. Look through old work. See what's sitting unfinished in the corner. Listen to their stories.

And then share some of that with the artists in my community.

Because perhaps that's the thing I can offer.

I'm naturally curious about people. I'm comfortable walking into these rooms and I'm not particularly fazed by reputation or achievement. I want to know the person behind the work.

If that gives me access to interesting artists and interesting conversations, perhaps I can hold the door open and let other artists into the room with me.

I don't know exactly what this will become yet.

And I think I'm going to resist the temptation to work that out too quickly.

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Are You an Artist With a Story to Share?

If you're an accomplished artist with experience, stories and something meaningful to share with other artists, I'd love to hear from you.

I'm interested in meeting artists in their studios, seeing where and how they work and having the kinds of conversations that don't always happen in formal interviews.

So if that sounds like you, get in touch.

You never know. I might end up sitting at your table next.

FYI - To date, this reel has had almost 12k views in just four days!