“Italy has never been an abstract idea for me, it has always been lived. The light, the weight of the architecture, the people and unhurried pace of life - it is where my work found its truest voice."
Teddy McDonald explores objects of Italian life, architecture and automotive design through a refined, material-led practice. Florence is his constant — a time capsule of beauty and proportion that resets the eye. What may appear complex, Teddy reduces by considered gesture to essential line, form and colour.`
While wandering the streets of Florence with someone who was deeply important to him, oil pastel and oil stick presented themselves to McDonald not as a choice but as an inevitability. Their tactile surface carrying the same texture and patina as the historic plastered walls, the cobbled streets and accumulated beauty of the city — a quality that brings depth to historic subjects, and unexpected warmth to contemporary ones.
A Practice That Has Earned Its Place
Since 2015, Lapo Elkann — collector, Vice President of the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin, and one of the most discerning private collectors in Italy — has collected McDonald's work and remained in active dialogue with him. A decade of sustained engagement says more than any single acquisition.
A unique painting was accepted by Flávio Manzoni, Ferrari's design director — a man whose design has shaped the most considered and collectible vehicles in contemporary life. McDonald's work was also chosen as the cover of The Florentine, Florence's leading English-language cultural journal, and commissioned for the menus of Il Santo Bevitore, a Michelin Guide-listed restaurant in the Oltrarno neighbourhood of Florence.
GQ magazine named Teddy McDonald as "The Artist's Artist" and "The Artist to Watch,” and earlier in his career, McDonald customised a Fender Stratocaster known as “Green T” and played extensively by Ed Sheeran on the Multiply world tour. He also co-designed another with John Matos aka Crash played on the Divide world tour and to headline the Glastonbury festival.
Works are held in private collections in Europe, the UK and USA.
The Practice in Person
For collectors who want to understand the work from the inside, McDonald occasionally opens his practice to private encounters in Florence and Rome — a day or several days spent in his company where you view the cities not through a cellphone but, by your own hand, creating a sketchbook of memories.