Acclaimed film-maker Anthony Baxter had a problem: he was making a BBC documentary about Scottish painter James Morrison, but he had no archive footage to illustrate the artist’s reminiscences. He thought about shooting live in the Arctic, but little did he know that COVID19 was just around the corner.
Fortunately he came to me instead, having seen my painterly style and realised that I could add something special to the project, in keeping with the subject of the documentary. And it’s been a dream project for me, animating in the painter’s own style, in digital oil paint and pen and ink, merging my art with Morrison’s, blurring the divide between art and memory.
It strikes me that animation has a lot to offer in these lockdown times – one woman in her home studio can create footage to reach the places that live action just can’t go.
The documentary won a Scottish BAFTA! It was broadcast on BBC Scotland and BBC 2 in 2021. Here’s a nice piece about it by BBC News.