Lucy Culliton's Big Skies (ATOM Study Guide)

Lucy Culliton's Big Skies is a documentary about an Australian painter working on landscape paintings of the country where she lives. It follows Culliton as she paints the big, drought-tarnished skies, and she talks about her art as we see her working on the paintings both outdoors and in her studio. Culliton is a major Australian artist whose work is immensely popular and sought by both galleries and private collectors, though her work is not as widely known outside NSW, where she lives, works and exhibits. These paintings of the Eden-Monaro region mark a new stage in her artistic development. The film explores her work processes and the relationships between her paintings, the farmers whose land she paints on, the landscape and the environment. Her paintings show the colours and scars on the landscape that are the result of serious prolonged drought, a drought that Culliton is also experiencing on her own property as she paints in the exhausting heat.

Curriculum relevance

Lucy Culliton's Big Skies would be an excellent film to show to middle and senior secondary and tertiary students of Art and Studio Arts. It could also be relevant to Australian Studies. Here, we have the opportunity to watch a painter at work. Culliton's openness and delight at creating her landscapes and sharing them with her neighbours, friends and viewers along with her down to earth, direct and engaging nature make the film highly accessible. Watching this film should inspire all young artists to look more closely at the place where they live and perhaps inspire them to think about 'landscape and place' as subjects for their artwork.