Drawing Out the Demons:
A Film about the Artist Attila Richard Lukacs

Directed by David Vaisbord
Produced by Trish Dolman and Stephanie Symns
Screen Siren Pictures

Two versions: 48 minutes & 78 minutes • 2004
Also available on DVD

Art. Drugs. Madness.

gifted artist, tormented soul, egomaniacal bad-boy hyped up on crystal-meth. This is the snapshot, circa summer 2001, as this raw and uncensored documentary begins tracking the dramatic career of Canadian-born painter Attila Richard Lukacs. A bold visionary whose life-size homoerotic renderings of skinheads fetch tens of thousands of dollars, Lukacs fails in his attempt to crack New York City and the world’s toughest art scene. He spirals into depression and drug addiction, alienates friends and arts associates, and pushes away his saintly parents. But the wired West Coast artist manages to make it to the other side, retreating from his disastrous NYC exploits to find detox, redemption, and creative renaissance in Maui.

A gritty and compulsive examination of the extremes of artistic temperament, the story is set against the backdrop of Lukacs' school days at Vancouver's Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design and his meteoric rise into the international art world. His paintings—once the toast of Berlin and Toronto—shift and change in tone and execution, revealing an artist of uncanny ability and endurance.

"Wonderfully voyeuristic…compulsively watchable…"
  – The Globe and Mail

"Drawing Out the Demons may be the most honest and substantial documentary ever made about a world-class artist."
  – Atlantic Film Festival

"…rather than romanticizing the artist's dysfunction, the filmmaker David Vaisbord allows us to observe the squalor of addiction and the paranoia and rage that come with it, glorifying instead the artistic discipline and self knowledge that finally delivered the artist from death's door and back to the studio."
  – The Globe and Mail

Subject(s): Artists–Attila Richard Lukacs, Gay, Painting