Coulter Watt

"My hope is that the viewers' and my perceptions will meet in the mirror of mutual recognition on a common note of expanded understanding. By playing on the enigmatic edge of the surreal that results from incongruously juxtaposing objects, I hope to press the viewer into thinking about the meaning of their interrelationships, and the viewer will have an experience."
-Coulter Watt

Coulter Watt attended The School of Visual Arts in New York City where he studied both Filmmaking and Painting. With equal fervor, he would continue to pursue the two disciplines in his career as he did in his education. For 40 years, Watt worked as a Director of Photography and a Cinema Verite Associate Producer/Cameraman. During this time, he worked with Robert Drew, the father of American documentary filmmaking. He applied lessons he learned from Drew and from Cartier Bresson's great essay The Decisive Moment to his work, and his films received international acclaim. One of his films, Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman with Judy Collins and Jill Goldmilow, was nominated for an Academy Award.

Watt's work as a painter has also proved to be prolific. While exhibiting at galleries such as the Sherry French Gallery in New York City, he was commissioned by Jim Henson to create The Muppet Mural, and his work, Home to Intrepid, has graced the collection of The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Watt paints in oils in a Flemish technique, considering the master painter Vermeer among his greatest influences. In his still life paintings, Watt explores metaphor using the language of dreams to press the viewer into thinking about the meaning of objects. Watt sees objects as "potent messengers" and considers their evocative power the foundation of his pieces. While drawing on such perennial themes as Greek mythology, psychology, and symbols from Western and Eastern mythology, Watt explores and depicts contemporary issues of the human condition, and he is especially interested in the "objective reality of inner experience."

Education
The School of Visual Arts, Painting and Filmmaking, New York, New York, 1968
Assistant to Haskell Wexler, ASC, multi-time Academy Award recipient

Influences and Teachers
Johannes Vermeer, Rackstraw Downs, Eric Fischl, John Singer Sargent, Willem de Kooning, Orson Wells, Robert Drew, Henri Cartier-Bresson

Artistic Community and Colleagues
Frank Arcuri, John Ennis, Colin Hunt, Joseph Renzetti

Connection to Bucks County
Watt resides and maintains his studio in Quakertown. In addition to exhibiting there, he also has a Fine Art Print Business, from which he offers prints of his work.

Watt is a founding member of the Board of Directors for the Upper Bucks Alliance for Creative Excellence.

Major Collections
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., 1983-1990

Major Awards
Academy Award Nominee, 1974, Feature Documentary
Festival International de Films de Femmes, Paris
Festival International du Cinema, Nyon
Best Feature Documentary, Independent Film Critics of New York
First Prize, Traditional Still Life in Oil, Phillips' Mill Annual Art Exhibition, New Hope, Pennsylvania, 2006
First Prize, Gamblin Torrit Grey Painting Competition, 2006

Films
Gimme Shelter, documentary of the Rolling Stones 1969 tour
Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman, with Judy Collins and Jill Godmilow
The London to Peking Motor Challenge
Endangered Parrots of the Amazon, with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger for the Audubon Society
End of Dynasty, for the BBC

TV
The Big Blue Marble
James at 15, for 20th Century Fox, NBC