Barbara Todd

Barbara Todd is an interdisciplinary, mid-career artist best known for innovative, quilted textile works in which she marries a minimalist aesthetic to a poetic and politicized sensibility. Her work is represented in museum and private collections, and in large-scale public commissions in Canada and the U.S. Born in Galt, Ontario, Todd studied fine art and art history at the University of Guelph where she received her BA in 1975.

In 1981, she moved to Banff, Alberta, where she lived and worked at the Banff Centre for the Arts for the next decade. Todd’s early exhibitions, which included several photographic installations, and a series of drawings and cut-out silhouettes, were playful explorations of cultural identity as reflected in men and women’s clothing. Her “Security Blanket” and “Coffin Quilt series, begun in Banff, have been exhibited widely.

Most notably, Barbara Todd : Security Blankets , organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in 1992, toured Canada for three years. In 1993 Todd moved to Montreal; the following year, she began a series of dramatic, black-on-blue quilts based on dreams, poetry and children’s drawings which culminated in the acclaimed installation A Bed is a Boat . shown at Galerie Oboro, Montreal (1996), the Library and Gallery, Cambridge (1997) and the Museum for Textiles. Toronto (1998).