Tony Foster: Painting on the Edge Review – Dive into the research on extreme landscape painting | film

TTraveling with Tony Foster comes with a disclaimer. According to the terms of the contract signed by the British painter’s potential companions: “You must have sufficient personal insurance to be able to transport your body home in the event of death.” Or as he warned beforehand: “There will be times on this trip when you wish you were anywhere else.” Fortunately, there is a silver lining to Foster’s expeditions into the deep wilderness in search of the perfect watercolor vantage point. “There will also be times of great joy, when you experience things you could never have dreamed of.”

Director David Shindel supposedly fell in blood before taking a raft with Foster on the Green River in Wyoming and Utah to make this intriguing documentary picture. The 79-year-old – described by a long-time acquaintance as “two toothpicks in a potato” – is impossibly strong after more than 30 years of trekking: in the great American outdoors, Bolivia, Mount Everest, you name it. It should be so: in one invasion, it took 16 days to locate the correct location. Once the easel is lowered, the self-taught artist creates light, airy panoramas with jewel-like clarity. It doesn’t seem to be just a matter of imbuing the landscape with his personal feelings. The work seems meditative. It’s about what the landscape puts into it.

Foster has a streak of self-sufficiency: he grew up in deepest Lincolnshire, resisted traditional education, and, for a time, ended up homeless on the swinging streets of London (something he initially refused to discuss). However, the film does not explain why, decades later, he is still so driven. He states that he is a political artist who seeks to depict the rapidly disappearing wilderness. Time also looms in a geological sense; He talks about being “a molecule on a mosquito’s eyelash” confronting the magnificence of nature. But it is not clear whether this is a source of help or something to be challenged, in the manner of Werner Herzog.

The film’s touch dissipates when the old master returns to his studio on the Corniche, where he finishes each painting; Foster is saddened when his shipment from Green River is shipped to the fair. Some of Schendel’s shots on the road are almost as impressive as his target’s creations – but he doesn’t have to do quite the same work.