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Outlook: Painting for our lives

Magazines & Reviews

Myuran Sukumaran and Ben Quilty

02/11/2020 GMT

Painting for our lives

BBC World Service - Outlook, Painting for our lives

Three fascinating portraits of people who used a paintbrush to transform their lives

A triptych of stories, with a condemned man painting until the day he faced the firing squad, a farm girl who dazzled Frida Kahlo, and a forger who wanted to make his mum proud.

Ben Quilty was one of Australia's most famous painters when he entered into an unusual friendship with a condemned man, Myuran Sukumaran, a convicted drug smuggler on death row in Indonesia. He was a member of a group of imprisoned Australians known as the Bali Nine. Ben was invited to teach Myuran how to paint, as a way to help him cope with his sentence, and he soon started to reveal an artistic talent. The two men gradually developed a close connection, but it was severed by a firing squad. First broadcast 2018.

Mexican artist Julia Lopez is now a world-renowned painter, but she very nearly didn't discover her talent at all. She grew up as a farm labourer in rural Mexico, and found work as a maid after moving to Mexico City. But one day her life changed, when she was scouted by the famous artist Frida Kahlo to become a model. It wasn't long before she picked up the paintbrush herself. Outlook's Clayton Conn has the story. First broadcast 2018

For nearly 30 years, Mark Landis donated scores of artworks by famous artists to museums all over the United States. He was feted as a philanthropist. But all of them were forged - by Mark himself. Because he never took any money from the museums, he hasn't committed a crime under US law. Jo Fidgen asked why he did it. First broadcast 2015.

Picture: Ben Quilty and Myuran Sukumaran
Credit: Andrew Quilty

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