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A Brush with Success

30-minute documentary film, about artist Ed Clark, an African American, second-generation Abstract Expressionist, © 2007, produced by Mark Hammond and Charles Martin

directed by Charles Martin
show in mini-DV
T 646 250 0244   E cmartinphoto@gmail.com

A Brush with Success is a thirty-minute documentary film about African American artist Ed Clark by Charles Martin. The film brings together Clark at work, and interviews of him and of other artists, critics and commentators - Jay Milder, Jack Whitten, Judith Wilson, April Kingsley, Valerie Mercer, Loida Lewis and Bob Blackburn. Conversations cover abstract expressionist painting - of which Clark is a major exponent - friends, early days in Paris and New York, childhood and family in Louisiana and Chicago, and training and influences.

The film has been enabled by the contributions of many, in particular Mark Hammond, Ken van Sickle, Carlos Flores, photographers Adger W. Cowans and Fernando Natalici, musician Pheeroan akLaff, and the Hybrid Media Project - City University of New York. Charles Martin is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature, Queens College-City University of New York, as well as a photographer with work in the Museum of Modern Art and other collections. 

Ed Clark, who recently had his eighty-first birthday, has spent most of his life painting around the world, but mostly between Paris and New York. He is an extremely important Abstract Expressionist painter, through not as famous as might be. Charles Martin and he met in Paris in 2003, while Martin was exhibiting photography there, and the two became good friends. Clark la ter agreed to be the subject of this documentary. People familiar with his importance--artists, critics and collectors--quickly agreed to take part.

The film presents Clark talking of art, his painting, jazz music, and his life from New Orleans to Chicago to Paris to New York and around the world. Through additional interviews, others in and familiar with the world of painting add to the story, attesting to Ed's influence, his impact, and his importance. They tell stories both professional and personal. Speakers include Jack Whitten, Bob Blackburn (a MacArthur prize winner), and Jay Milder--artists and contemporaries; April Kingsley, Judith Wilson and Valerie Mercer--critics and curators; and Loida Lewis, a collector.

The film shows Ed painting, as well as discussing art. The interviews are shot so that the speakers tell their stories and offer their points of view in a smooth flow without the intrusion of a questioner or narrator. The camera work is direct and expertly done by Mark Hammond co-producer) and Ken van Sickle (who has worked on an academy award winning documentary). The film includes, too, stills (by van Sickle) from the Paris and 10th Street/New York gallery heydays.