As a child, trapped in a crazy Jewish household in a poor Chicago tenement, the American artist Robert Natkin had to find a way to change his life. His imagination was engulfed by movies from Fred Astaire to 'The Wizard of Oz', and by the vast collection of modern European paintings at the Chicago Institute. In 'Life' magazine he read an article on Jackson Pollock and realised "even a schmuck like me can become an artist". This film is about some of the paradoxes of his success, about how and why he paints the way he does, and why the English critic Peter Fuller - author of a recent provocative book on art and psychoanalysis - thinks these particular abstract paintings matter.