Video No. 6005. English Language Pal VHS.
An Exploration of Art on Film.
Directed by Don Featherstone.
Arthur Boyd (b.1920) comes from a well-known family of artists, and is one of the most important landscape painters to come out of the Australian tradition of the 20th century. His large, expansive canvases depict the primeval landscape of his native land with a rough sensuality that is as raw and pure as the scenery of the bush itself.
In this film, shot at his wilderness homestead amid the spectacular scenery of the Shoalhaven river in New South Wales, Boyd talks about his work and its influences, encompassing his early Melbourne paintings, the 'Wimmera' series, his "London" period and the Shoalhaven paintings.
Two new major paintings were commissioned especially for the film; the first, 'Pulpit Rock', is painted en plein air, and forms the basis for the second, a studio work entitled 'The Bathers'. Both pictures address the theme of man's relation to the environment, a recurrent concern in Boyd's oeuvre, and the film shows the artist at work on them, painting on camera with an acute sensitivity to the light values of his surroundings, and often using his hands instead of a paintbrush. As these impressive canvases take shape, the viewer is given a rare opportunity to watch at first-hand the working methods and creative process of a major artist.
