By the time Kevin “Pro” Hart died in 2006, he had become Australia’s most commercially successful artist, proclaimed “The Father of the Australian Outback Art Movement”, was a famous TV commercial star. Yet Pro Hart was never accepted by the art establishment; to this day, his work has still not been hung in Australia’s National Gallery.
Why would an artist collected by Kings and Queens, by movie stars, even by presidents, who was awarded the MBE and considered the father of an entire art movement be dismissed by the art world at large?
Perhaps it was his populist artistic style and subject matter. Or his gun-toting, man’s man (and not very “artsy”) persona. Or that he was just too successful for a living artist…even too disrespectful of it, choosing to drive around his small outback town in a Rolls-Royce…after painting it outrageously. He was indeed anti-elistist, trying to survive in a world of elitists. Whatever the reason(s), the art world certainly had it out for Pro Hart.
And the producers of CHASING DRAGONFLIES: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF PRO HART want to know why. So, with the cooperation of the Hart family, they’ve started a crowdfunding campaign to send their screenwriter to Pro’s lifelong home of Broken Hill to find out. And write a movie about it.
“We’re developing this film the way Pro himself would have — outside the establishment’s own funding mechanisms,” says CHASING DRAGONFLIES producer Philippa Whitfield Pomeranz. “Pro was a rebel, so we have to be, too.” She added: “He faced a lifetime of rejection. But he remained steadfast in his vision and had unshakeable faith in himself. He triumphed to make an incredible contribution to the art world and to humanity. It’s a moving, personal story we all need to be inspired by. So we’re going to tell it…and we need your help by supporting the film on Pozible.com.”
CHASING DRAGONFLIES: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF PRO HART has launched its crowdfunding campaign at www.Pozible.com, where you can watch a video about Pro Hart and the project, and pledge your support. Varying degrees of sponsorship will be rewarded with special gifts from the Pro Hart Gallery in Broken Hill, Australia.