Kenneth J Harvey | Canada, 2019 | English | 72 minutes | Featuring: Mary Pratt, Christopher Pratt
It Was All So Wonderful: The Everyday Magic of Mary Pratt follows the beloved artist’s development as one of the country’s great realist painters. The documentary features Mary’s final interviews and appearances on film, highlighting her career and life as an artist. Was she a feminist painter or traditional housewife?
Displaced and isolated, Mary Pratt’s life was a highly complicated one of delicate rebellion. In this touching and timely documentary, Harvey captures Pratt’s humour, strength and beauty of spirit, but also Mary’s feminist significance as chronicler of women’s experiences, with her fascination with and elevation of domestic objects.
The film contains archival footage from Mary Pratt’s life in Fredericton dating back to the 1950s. Local art historians John Leroux and Tom Smart of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery are featured in the film.