The Creation of Torrit Smoke // NC Filmmaker Follows Painter's Creative Process

The Indianapolis International Film Festival is currently running at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and I was able to attend a showing last night. I fell in love with the half-hour documentary "The Creation of Torrit Smoke." North Carolina filmmaker John Francis follows painter Blakely Dadson through a 4-month process of creating a painting. It is fascinating from a purely artistic, compositional standpoint, but the parts I found truly inspiring were those where Dadson talked about the creative process and the spirituality of it. He had some interesting things to say about the perils of perfectionism, the nature of art as a calling, and the way in which painting is often more like discovering something old than creating something new.

Click here to read a review of the film, or take a look at the trailer below.