A few weeks ago, at the gallery talk at the Principle Gallery, I was trying to explain my process and how my work comes around to being what it is and why there is often a repetition of form and subject. It’s a difficult thing to describe and has always evaded the limit of my words. In doing so that day I used an example of an apt description that I had seen once on televison and had written of in this blog.
It was from a segment on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery series called Wallander: Sidetracked starring Kenneth Branagh as a Swedish police detective involved in solving a series of murders. There is a point at the end where he is forced to shoot and kill the killer who is a disturbed and abused young man. Wallander (Branagh) is deeply affected by this and goes to see his father, played by the great British character actor David Warner (I’ll always remember him best as Evil in the film Time Bandits from Terry Gilliam) who is shown above. He is a painter of landscapes and is struggling with the onset of Alzheimer’s.
While trying to find a way to comfort his distraught son, the father reminds him of the times when Wallander as a child would ask why he painted what he did, why they were always the same. He gives an answer that struck me deeply when I first heard it because it was so near to the heart of what I do as a painter.
I used this example that day and as I describing the scene to the folks there at the talk, I was wishing I could just show them the scene to better illustrate what I had meant. Anyway, I was able to find the scene which is definitely enhanced by camerawork and background music. I hope it gets the point across as well as I think it does.
Redtree Times 