Luc Leestemaker is a Dutch/American painter who ended up in the U.S. thirteen years ago. After struggling with marital, health, and financial problems he reinvented himself as a successful abstract expressionist. His work is tranquil and seductive, layered and deceptively simple. It's selling and selling. But what is the real life of the artist like? Is it as enviable and happy as the myth that has been constructed around him?

British award-winning feature film director Terence Gross ("Hotel Splendide", "The Sin Eater"), spends two months in the artist's company. In an increasingly intimate and sometimes disturbing exploration of the artist's life, he uncovers the man behind the mask, a man struggling with ongoing financial challenges, bizarre health crises and treatments, a relationship that looks very different on the inside, and an unresolved past in Holland.

He follows Leestemaker through gallery openings in New Orleans, Florida, and the West Coast, then back to his home town in the Netherlands, and begins to build up a picture of the real-life pressures that underlie the external world of the tranquil artist.

The film moves from humor and warmth to cynicism and anger. A portrait of the painter slowly begins to emerge. Beneath the glamor and the charm is a man whose only truly quiet place may exist in his work. Without judging or falling into false adulation, the film reveals what it truly means to be a successful artist in the 21st Century. The result is a surprising and often moving half-hour portrait.

OFFICIAL SELECTION:
2003 Milwaukee International Film Festival
2003 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival
2003 Santa Fe International Film Festival

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Mr. Leestemaker's paintings can be found in the following galleries:
Hilligoss Galleries ; Chicago, IL

BGH Gallery; Santa Monica, CA
Galerie SoNo ; Norwalk, CT
Stricoff Fine Art ; New York, NY
Contessa Gallery ; Cleveland, OH
Galerie d'Orsay ; Boston, MA
New River Fine Art ; Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Holland Art House ; West Chester, PA
Soren Christensen Gallery ; New Orleans, LA
Elizabeth Edwards Fine Art; Palm Desert, CA