'ROMANTICISM is not a dirty word, " the renowned landscape painter Barrie Cooke tells the camera with a smile, as he stands before a work in progress in his brightly-lit, rural studio.

There is romanticism aplenty in Soul of Ireland, a two-part film to be aired on RTE One as part of the Arts Lives series. Directed by veteran arts documentary maker Sean O Mordha of Araby Productions, it is an evocative exploration of what it means to be a landscape artist, in particular in the context of a strong tradition in Irish art, stretching all the way from Paul Henry to Dorothy Cross. Indeed, the film rather boldly posits that landscape painting is "the national art of Ireland" and that it is central to the Irish "soul" . . . if such a thing can be defined.

"The landscape is history, its growth, its survival. No other country in Europe had quite the same relationship with the soil, with the landscape, as we had, " art critic Brian Fallon explains in the film. "The whole Irish feeling for nature is curiously intimate, it's almost a soul thing, you might say, without any sense of cliche. I think it's right at the centre of the nation's psyche, it's almost a sacred thing."

O Mordha agrees: "Landscape painting is central to Irish art and identity. It may be a cliche, but the west of Ireland, in the last century . . . through language, literature and the visual art . . . has been central to our culture."

When we think of Irish landscape painting, the first images that tend to spring to mind are the mythic representations of the west by those titans of Irish art Paul Henry and Jack B Yeats. But also, unfortunately, there is the overabundance of Sunday-painter tourist-fodder that populates the nation's commercial galleries.

But as Dublin artist James O'Connor notes in Soul of Ireland: "There is a difference between painting landscape and being a landscape painter."

It is for this reason that O Mordha has focused on six distinguished contemporary artists, who each address the subject of landscape in a markedly individual way. Sean McSweeney wanders through the bog he inherited, hoping to find inspiration for the evocative, semi-abstract works that he creates in his converted schoolhouse studio. Mary Lohan, meanwhile, takes hundreds of photographs of the sea, using them as a springboard to create endless variations of seascapes.

"It's something I want to describe but I know is impossible, " she says. For Barrie Cooke, a keen fisherman, his interest is primarily in lakes, with his paintings often depicting polluted, but strangely beautiful, scenes.

Dublin-born James O'Connor, now based in Munich, has had a lifelong passion for trees, while Martin Gale's version of the landscape is at odds with the frequently depicted, untamed drama of the west . . . he prefers the gentle, husbanded lands of Wicklow or the overlooked midlands. Dorothy Cross is not a landscape painter at all but her work is deeply embedded in the landscape. She gathers discarded objects, reconfiguring them to create something new; she is interested in the "residue of nature, rather than trying to entrap it in a single frame".

A strong sense of the dedication of these artists emerges from the film. "Their vocational commitment is palpable, " says O Mordha.

"There is no other life for them."

Cue the artists on location in the landscape itself . . . traversing bogs, strolling through parks, climbing rocks . . . as they ponder life, the universe and everything.

This gives O Mordha plenty of opportunities to seduce the viewer with images of the landscape, accompanied by somewhat sentimental classical music. But seeing them in their natural habitat reminds us of the beauty of rural Ireland and it's not so difficult to comprehend what draws artists to it.

O Mordha "weaves" the stories of these six artists into a broad introduction to the history of Irish landscape art. By doing so, the film demonstrates how the land has served different purposes to different artists over time. It examines the construction of the myth of a pure, native west through the work of Paul Henry and Jack B Yeats . . . who both, unsurprisingly, loom large in the film . . . and traverses the idealising work of Sean Keating, Maurice MacGonigal and Charles Lamb.

The advent of post-war modernism is also examined, demonstrating how artists such as Patrick Collins and Tony O'Malley, in an environment that was unsupportive of the very notion of being an artist, created their own, highly distinctive, individualistic interpretations of the landscape.

The film concludes by charting how artists have become increasingly distanced from the notion of landscape as representing the Irish nation, turning instead to particular, individual concerns. "Each generation must engage with the landscape from their point of view and also acknowledge a changing landscape, " says O Mordha. "The landscape of the 21st century is not the Achill that Paul Henry saw . . . quite the contrary."

One of the major preoccupations that emerges in the final minutes of the film is of an endangered landscape. If these six artists have one thing in common, it is a concern for the preservation of that landscape.

"They're all very conscious of an environment that is under siege, and they have to take this on board, " says O Mordha. "Can they save the world? No, but they have to engage with it."

There is still room for a touch of romanticism, however, as James O'Connor concludes: "You have to paint the decay of nature with the excitement of nature."

'Soul of Ireland' airs on RTE One, at 10.15pm on 3 April and 10 April