"Travelling with Tony Foster comes with a disclaimer. According to the terms of the contract signed by the British painter's prospective companions: You must have sufficient personal insurance for your body to be flown home in case of fatality. Or, as he warns beforehand: There will be times on this journey when you wish you were absolutely anywhere else. Fortunately, there is an upside to Foster's deep wilderness expeditions in search of the perfect vantage point for a watercolour."
"The 79-year-old described by one longtime acquaintance as two toothpicks in a potato is improbably hardy after more than 30 years of trekking: in the great American outdoors, Bolivia, Mount Everest, you name it. He needs to be: on one foray, it took him 16 days to locate the right spot. Once the easel is down, the self-taught artist makes luminous, airy panoramas with a jewel-like clarity."
"He states that he is a political artist, seeking to capture wildernesses that are fast disappearing. Time in the geological sense also looms; he speaks of being a molecule on a gnat's eyelash in the face of nature's monumentality. But it's not clear if that's a source of succour or still sallying forth in old age something to be defied, Werner Herzog-style."
Tony Foster requires companions to have insurance for repatriation and warns of dangerous, uncomfortable moments during expeditions. He embarks on deep, often prolonged wilderness journeys to locate precise vantage points for watercolours, sometimes taking many days to find a site. At 79 he remains physically hardy after decades of trekking across regions including the American outdoors, Bolivia and Everest. His self-taught practice yields luminous, airy panoramas that convey what the landscape imparts to him. He frames his work as political documentation of disappearing wilderness and contemplates human smallness against geological monumentality.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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