Tablescapes:
A Documentary on Art
in the Life of Joseph Plaskett

Canadian master colourist Joseph Francis Plaskett (1918‐2014), a representational rebel who introduced half of Toronto’s Painters Eleven to Hofmann and to each other, sidestepped the abstract era to spend fifty years in Paris and his last sixteen in the UK, promoting internationalism in the arts and exploring how Hofmann’s teachings relate to realism.

For fifty years his ornate studio in Paris became a magnet for Canadian artists, writers, filmmakers, and poets abroad. Despite his humble existence as an expatriate, Plaskett exhibited regularly in major galleries across Canada all his life. In the spring of 2001, he received the Order of Canada, and in 2004, he established the Joseph Plaskett Award to enable young Canadian painters to travel to Europe.

In archival footage the artist unveils his own search for meaning, as Takao Tanabe, poet Phyllis Webb, Marta Braun, New York artist Paul Resika, and many others describe the magic of his work and gatherings in the documentary Tablescapes.

(60 and 75 min versions)