— Video Review By William Swislow

The Highwaymen Produced and Directed by Julia D'Amico, 2000, 46 minutes -- The Highwaymen video considers a less isolated, less closeknit, congregation of artists centered on Ft. Pierce, Florida, and active as a group mostly in the 1960s. The story of the Highwaymen was told in these pages before. They were young blacks for whom painting was, as they explain in this video, the alternative to field work.

"Picking that fruit had a lot to do with me learning to paint," says George Buckner.

Art aside, it is a great story, and the video lets the artists tell it. They produced pictures of the Florida landscape in bulk, often traveling along the highway and selling them to professional offices for $30 or so for a 24x36 picture. This video lacks the technical polish evident in The Quilts of Gees Bend, which benefited from the backing of Jane Fonda. But even if their faces occasionally are unlit, the painters give an intriguing account of how they began making pictures, and how and why they kept at it. Hezekiah Baker recalls taking a Famous Artists School course and selling his first five paintings to a motel, which seems appropriate given the usual subject matter of these pretty landscapes. Buckner remembers learning how to mix colors as a way to save money on supplies.

These artists were clearly market-driven in a way that sometimes distresses many collectors of self-taught and outsider art. Many of them also received guidance, directly or indirectly, from a trained painter of landscapes, A.E. Backus. Yet, it's not clear that their motivations and approach to work, at least in the early days, were all that different from the women of Gees Bend. The Highwayman -- a name applied to these artists much later -- even worked at times in group sessions.

And the involvement with art was not just mercenary. "It was not a passive kind of interest," said Robert Butler. "It was an interest that had to do with breathing and existing psychologically as a person. I could feel good when I drew."

The video probes some of these questions, but not deeply. It only touches on the controversy over how seriously to take this work, which to some tastes smacks of superficial kitsch. Yet, defenders find the Highwayman paintings, which their often playful colors and imaginative rendering, not only charming but also artistically rich. This video demonstrates a great deal of the charm and enough of the richness to make for compelling viewing.

This review appeared in Intuit's Outsider magazine.

SOURCE: Interesting Ideas, Outsider Pages (Video Reviews)