BY WENDY ELLIOTT
Kings County Advertiser/Register
When Andreas Schultz was a young student in London, England, he ducked in Canada House one day to avoid a downpour - and encountered the powerful art of Alex Colville.
Years later, he was able to film the man behind the art.
August 29, Fundy Film will screen the documentary Colville twice in celebration of the Wolfville master artist's 90th birthday. The new documentary by Schultz, who is German, is a portrait that uses many of the artist’s intimate, unsettling canvases to illustrate how his 60-year relationship with his wife, Rhoda, is reflected in his work. The film crew spent six weeks at home with the artist in Wolfville, and the film shows Colville’s work in the light of important events in his personal life, focusing on his decades in Wolfville and placing the artist’s austere, raw realism in context.
“As a true realist, I must reinvent the world,” Colville has said.
Arguably the most famous living Canadian artist, he chooses his subjects from his immediate environment, the everyday routines of a Maritime province: the university town of Wolfville, the Evangeline beach with Cape Blomidon in the background, the Gaspereau Valley, the snaking tidal waters of Grand Pré. Colville records the fleeting intensity of the present moment with masterful control. He completes only two or three paintings per year. The mysterious power of his work, the muted distress they convey, Schultz believes, are testament to the time Colville devotes to each one.
This 67-minute portrait of the artist will be screened at 4 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. The door opens 30 minutes before screenings. Admission is a freewill donation, with proceeds for the Valley Hospice Foundation. For more info, see www.fundyfilm.ca
