The Painter Sam Francis

Forty years in the making, The Painter Sam Francis is artist Jeffrey Perkins’ lyrical and intimate portrait of a friend, mentor, and leading light of American abstract art. The film retraces Francis’ life and career from his childhood in California to his artistic maturation in post-war Paris, his time in Japan, and his preeminence in the United States. Hinging on an interview that Perkins conducted with Francis in 1973, as well as extended scenes of the artist at work in the studio, the film provides deep insight into a man for whom creativity was a powerful life-sustaining force.

Sam Francis’s life as an artist began in a hospital bed. While training to be an Air Force pilot in the early stages of WWII, he sustained an injury that perplexed doctors and kept him in a full-body cast for months. Doctors later discovered spinal tuberculosis, and Francis spent the next two years of his life convalescing in a California hospital. With nothing but time on his hands, he took up painting, encouraged by Bay Area painter David Park. A new medical treatment eradicated his TB, but Francis believed otherwise. The healing power of art had saved him. An artist was born.

After receiving his master’s in painting from Berkeley, Francis and wife Muriel Goodwin went to Paris and became involved in a small but flourishing group of American expatriate artists who were inspired by the work of Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Money was scarce but creativity plentiful, and Francis’s atmospheric ‘white paintings’ began to attract attention. A savvy businessman, he quickly parlayed his talent into financial success, and his work expanded in both size and expressive power.

In 1957, Francis was invited to visit Japan to create a large mural for Hiroshi Teshigahara’s school for flower arrangement, jumpstarting a lifelong involvement with Japanese culture and Zen thought. The web of colorful interlocking forms that had dominated his style began to break apart, allowing the white background of the canvas to become a compositional element. Francis understood the nature of the void in an intuitively Japanese way, and they embraced his work. The Idemitsu Museum in Tokyo now contains the largest collection of Francis’s work in the world.

While in Tokyo, tuberculosis struck again, this time in Francis’s uro-genital tract. He traveled to Switzerland for treatment, and once again his hospital room became a painting studio. Accord¬ing to his son Osamu, the ‘Blue Ball’ paintings that emerged during this period were Francis’s envisionment of his disease, and he believed it was through painting them that he was able to recover from his illness once more.

Returning to California in 1965, Francis entered an idyllic period in his life. With fourth wife Mako Idemitsu, he raised two sons and reached the pinnacle of his financial success. His gen¬erous spirit brought many younger artists to his door, including members of the Single Wing Turquoise Bird, a psychedelic light show group that had been performing at L.A.’s Shrine Audi¬torium. Among these was Jeffrey Perkins, and the two artists became friends. In 1968, Francis allowed Perkins to film the creation of the large painting Berlin Red. It was the first time anyone had been granted access to film Francis at work in the studio.

In 1973, Perkins conducted a unique interview with Francis at his Santa Monica home. The casual nature of this encounter led to a conversation that was both spontaneous and difficult. Although Francis refused to speak about painting, his insights into the nature of dreams and his interactions with his children show both a philosophical and human side to the enigmatic artist.

Two years later, Francis split up with wife Mako, and she and the children moved to Japan. His work turned dark, resulting in a series of paintings in which black grids interacted with chaotic splashes of color. Again Perkins was allowed to film Francis in the studio, this time with much different results. The bold, sweeping gestures of Berlin Red were replaced by much smaller, subtler applications of color, and the works Easter and Joyous Lake show a more contained effort while retaining Francis’s trademark lyricism.

Francis’s success and gregarious nature began to burden him as external demands on his time increased. He married for the fifth time and began to create raw and difficult work, pouring, splashing, and rolling paint in bold, violent ways. At age 70 he had another son and began working with renewed vigor. Prostate cancer struck, and Francis’s absolute belief in the healing power of the mind led him to choose a non-traditional approach to medicine. Despite his past experience of overcoming illness through art, Francis succumbed to the disease on November 4, 1994.

In 2000, Perkins began to collect interviews with the people closest to Francis, and over the next several years this process took him around the world – to Japan, Europe, and across the United States. Intimate conversations with friends, family members, and fellow artists – including Ed Ruscha, Bruce Conner, and James Turrell – illuminate a mysterious and complex personality, and its reflection in a body of work that is simultaneously diverse and singular. For Francis, art was a path to transcendence; for Perkins, Francis was art. The Painter Sam Francis is a labor of love, a moving portrait of a friend, and tribute to the power of art.

“It’s a stirring snapshot of that strange space where the act of creating can be a religious experience.” (S. James Snyder, Time Out New York)