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Artist Wanda Koop shows us what we missed the first time, what remains hidden, and makes us question how and what we see.

A one-hour television documentary. Category: Arts, Culture, Biography

Synopsis

Two 30-year career retrospectives at the Winnipeg and National Art Gallery are approaching and the visionary Canadian artist Wanda Koop is preparing massive new paintings of archetypal cities and familiar yet disquieting landscapes. Named by Time Magazine as one of Canada’s best artists, recipient of the Order of Canada, honorary doctorates and prizes, Wanda negotiates the tension of private and public as she meets the demands of creating privately and exhibiting publicly. Breaking from the demands of the studio she embarks on a journey by freighter boat. Sketches, photographs and moments of observation soon lead to a new group of astonishing paintings and insights into the creative process.

This is an experience based film. Questions about vision, perception and creative thinking are explored. How do eyes, brain and imagination interact during the process of artistic creation? How does Wanda transform her physical environment into a two-dimensional world of extraordinary colour? A sketching trip by freighter boat, landscapes, colour and vision science experiments accompanied by interviews, a poetic text and an evocative music score follow creative process from the real to the imagined.

The film explores the importance of the Artist’s Studio, as a factory of the imagination. We meet Wanda in her newly renovated factory building where the multifaceted process of making, storing, archiving, marketing and selling her work occur. This is a wondrous world of hundreds of paintings, thousands of sketches and tables full of the painter’s tools.

This is also a knowledge-based film that explores the science of vision, colour and perception.  Wanda Koop’s vision is tested in at the 3D Vision Research Lab at York University.

The film style follows Wanda’s painting style. Colour is saturated and precise. Pacing alternates between fast and immersive to still and contemplative. The idea of glancing, noticing and observing is developed throughout. The real and the abstract co-exist. We enter Wanda’s world.

Directors Statement

I wanted to make a film about how Wanda Koop translates the three-dimensional world of observed phenomenon into a thin, yet colour saturated layer of paint on a two dimensional canvas. I am fan of her work. I see a direct correlation between her observations, note taking process and final works. Wanda agreed to a film about her work but she would not allow me to film her in the act of painting. This dilema encouraged me to look for a shared experience as a metaphor for creative process. In this film, the artist, cinematographer and director embark on a collaborative journey by freighter boat on the Saint Lawrence River, Canada. Throughout we felt we were actually living Koop’s paintings of industrial sites, harbours, vistas and the pure colour of sky and water in all light conditions. We were exhilarated, exhausted and saturated with the experience of looking, seeing and thinking creatively about the world around us. In the end Koop made hundreds of sketches and as she says in the film, “this journey will influence my work for years to come.”