Film focuses on the life and work of British artist Roy Henry Alexander Gover aka “RHAG,” whose Bay Area years included an exhibit at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor alongside of Rembrandt and a five-year retrospective at SFMOMA.
Picture

Artist Roy Gover, surrounded by some of his most famous artwork. Courtesy images.

The O’Hanlon Center for the Arts debuted its Art Film Friday series this year, and for its March edition, the center takes a look at the life and work of a British artist who left a deep imprint on the Bay Area.

The Art Film Fridays screening of ​Doug Walker and Regina O’Connell’s “RHAG” – the acronym that artist Roy Henry Alexander Gover used for himself – is set for March 10 @ 7pm at the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts. It features a post-screening discussion of the film with O’Connell and popcorn and beverages by donation.

Gover was born in London and moved to the Bay Area in 1958. In the years that followed, he landed exhibits at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, alongside Rembrandt, as well as a five-year retrospective at San Francisco MOMA. His art has been collected throughout the United States and Europe.

Gover was also celebrated for producing his own “at home music tapes,” which have become underground treasures to some and served as “the music on tour buses, late at night, by many bands in the 1990s as they traveled from gig to gig. He is a  folk hero to many who have listened to him expound about Life – as only Roy could do,” according to the Barefoot Art Gallery in San Francisco, which showcases his work. 

“The art of Roy Gover defies simple classification,” said Joseph Baird of the North Point Gallery in San Francisco, at an exhibit of Gover’s work there in 1981. “It blends elements of Surrealism, of fantasy, and autobiography with roots that lie in the spare draftsmanship and luminescent washes of several European masters. It is an intensely personal art, closely mirroring the emotional highs and lows of everyday life, yet always disciplined by a strict technical finesse that gives his paintings and drawings their taut order.”

Gover died in October, 2003. “He was truly a modern master,” the Barefoot Gallery says.

The 411: The Art Film Fridays screening of ​Doug Walker and Regina O’Connell’s “RHAG” is set for March 10 @ 7pm at the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, 616 Throckmorton Ave. Admission $5. 


Want to know what’s happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!