Prophecy

Creating is an incredible journey that can open the door to a new universe" This is a rare, intimate exploration of a single oil painting and the first major film to reveal the motive and techniques behind each stroke of paint as the artist creates.

Take a gander at Peter Howson’s exquisite painting “Prophecy,” for this might be the only time you will see it. The grand canvas of the big screen provides a wonderfully unique view of the making of a masterpiece as director Charlie Paul observes the Scottish artist in his element. The doc chronicles the creation of Howson’s “Prophecy” from conception through completion. It offers an immersive glimpse into the painstaking commitment to the artistic process and an intimate insight into the man behind a great work of art.

Paul’s doc notes that most of Howson’s paintings find their ways into private collections and—spoiler alert—“Prophecy” is no exception. Thanks to the power of the camera, though, Howson lets the public witness his artistic process as he creates the painting over the course of several months and guides the doc through every idea and every brush stroke that transforms the work along the way. Prophecy documents the making of a grandly ambitious canvas and it’s much in the vein of the recent arts Hieronymus Bosch doc Bosch: Garden of Dreams as it uses the benefit of a feature-length running time to unpack a dense and richly detailed work of art.

Both Prophecy and Bosch focus on artworks that are layered with exquisite detail. Howson’s painting is a vision of the future. It’s an orgy of ominous despair and violence with a canvas populated with awestruck figures and a television that fizzles with the American flag on its airwaves. Both paintings aspire to something divine. Howson explains to Paul how his connection to God fuels his work, noting that his relationship with God is the most important one in his life. He draws upon his influences, some of which are more obvious than others are as they range from da Vinci to Tin Tin, as he explains the elaborately prophetic scene of action that begins as nothing other than a gingery orange square painted in swathes of colour as fiery as TinTins’ hair.