Award-winning Angus filmmaker Anthony Baxter has revealed a moving portrait of renowned Scots artist James Morrison as his latest film.
The Eye of the Storm will have its world premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival next month.
It celebrates the life of the internationally-renowned landscape painter and Royal Scottish Academy figure who died last August.
Morrison made Montrose his home, but travelled to locations including Africa, France, and Canada, as well as making three Arctic trips to capture the raw environment in his spectacular work.
Baxter rose to fame with his Montrose Pictures production You’ve Been Trumped in 2011.
It charted departing US president Donald Trump’s battle to create a golf course on the environmentally sensitive Menie links north of Aberdeen.
The filmmaker revealed the privilege of spending time with Mr Morrison in the final stages of his life.
Mr Baxter spent the last two years working on the project as Mr Morrison battled fading eyesight and deteriorating health.
“James wanted to meet me after seeing You’ve Been Trumped,” said Mr Baxter.
“He was concerned about the devastation of the coastline taking place at the Trump golf course, and the idea for the documentary started then.
“It was a privilege to be able to follow James over the last couple of years of his life,” he added.
“His work is breathtakingly beautiful.
“I hope this film will bring it to a whole new audience in Scotland and around the world.”
The film tells the story of Morrison’s early years, painting the tenements of Glasgow, through to a dramatic encounter with a polar bear among the melting icebergs in North West Greenland.
As he struggles with imposing blindness, the film follows the artist’s preparations for what turned out to be his last ever public exhibition at the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh in January 2020.
It draws on a vault of rare BBC archive footage and features specially-commissioned animation by Catriona Black with the support of Screen Scotland.
Eye of the Storm also features songs by leading Scottish folk singer Karine Polwart.
Commissioned by BBC Scotland, it will premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival on February 28.
The film will then be released theatrically through Glasgow-based distributor Cosmic Cat ahead of its television debut on the BBC Scotland Channel in the spring.
A life in landscape
Born in Glasgow, James Morrison studied at the city’s School of Art, founding the Glasgow Group of artists with Anda Paterson and James Spence in the late 1950s.
He spent a brief time in the Mearns coastal village of Catterline, before making Montrose his home in 1965.
In the same year Morrison joined the staff of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee and remained there until 1987 when he retired to paint full-time.
He was an academician of the Royal Scottish Academy and a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour.
Mr Morrison, who was 88 when he died, exhibited with The Scottish Gallery from the 1950s.
His January 2020 exhibition, From Angus to the Arctic, was his 25th solo show with the gallery.
The Scottish Gallery described him as “one of Scotland’s most distinctive and brilliant painters on his passing.
Montrose Pictures and Trump
You’ve Been Trumped told the story of the local families who took on Donald Trump over his plan to create a luxury golf course on the links at Balmedie, near Aberdeen.
Filmmaker Baxter followed it up with You’ve Been Trumped Too, which was finally given worldwide distribution last year.
It followed a four-year fight for release following legal threats by the team of the billionaire businessman and reality TV show host now in the final days of his controversial US presidency which has ended with a second impeachment vote.
In 2020, Mr Baxter also landed a release deal for his film Flint, which tells the story of the 2014 Michigan water poisoning scandal.
He directed and co-produced Flint with the BBC and it debuted at the Glasgow Film Festival.
As many as 12,000 children are believed to have been exposed to drinking water containing high levels of lead after a change in supply for the state’s largest city.
The move was blamed for an outbreak of legionnaires’ disease, and is thought to have claimed as many as 70 victims.
He directed and co-produced Flint with the BBC and it debuted at the Glasgow Film Festival.
