Rogues and Leaders serve as a confluence of various realities that have dramatically shaped social and political norms over the past few years. Both series document a tipping point in gender politics that occurred in 2017 when the sexual abuse allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein led to the Me Too Movement. Best known by the hashtag #MeToo, the movement gave legitimacy to the inherent power imbalance between survivors and their perpetrators and motivated women worldwide to come forward about past and current sex crimes committed by men, many of whom are celebrities and political leaders.
Tod began painting the series during the first wave of COVID, which simultaneously hit the world as some of the most famous cases were in the news. Given the difficulty of getting art supplies at that time, Tod chose watercolour and a modest format of 8×10-inches to suit the pandemic’s austerity measures. As a result, the paintings are small, but their subject matter isn’t. Poring over the faces of each predator to capture their likeness was an emotionally complicated and unsettling process – from recognizing the extent to which sexual crimes permeate every corner of society to our collective obsession for crime and horror and the inability to look away from the media frenzy.
As a counter to that emotional weight, Tod began painting female leaders from a similar period. Some women are easily recognizable, like the Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern, or Queen Elizabeth II. But many are not familiar, which is in contrast to the Rogues, whom we can name and about whom we can probably provide salacious details. With Leaders, Tod has found a subject that appears to be endless. Every portrait she completes has led her to another leader she hadn’t heard of before, including Saar Kuugongelwa, Prime Minister of Namibia since 2015, and Sahle-Work Zewde, President of Ethiopia.
Ultimately, both series are about women. The first is about men who have harassed them (and worse), and the second celebrates what women have achieved, and can accomplish for themselves and the world.
