At Home With the Artist Beverly McIver "Raising Renee," a documentary that will be shown on HBO, chronicles Beverly McIver's life as a caregiver. WHEN she left North Carolina 23 years ago, Beverly McIver never imagined returning. Feisty, talented and ambitious, Ms. McIver was more than eager to shake off the warm clinches of her family and the chilly, intractable racism of the South. And in her lush, narrative paintings - for which she has gathered, at midcareer, an impressive array of fellowships, residencies, solo shows and awards - she has never stopped exploring those themes. Portraits of herself in blackface and a clown's wig show her kinship with artists like Cindy Sherman; in her "laundry" paintings, her mother and her mentally disabled older sister, Renee, hang wash on a clothesline, lyrical compositions that recall the work of Millet and other 19th-century realists. But in 2007, Ms. McIver, now 49, was lured from a tenured position at Arizona State University by North Carolina Central University, the historically black university where she had learned to paint. By then, her mother had died of cancer and left Ms. McIver with the care of Renee, a responsibility she assumed just as her career was taking off. "Raising Renee," a documentary that will be shown on Feb. 22 on HBO, follows the sisters for six years, from Ms. McIver's first New York City solo gallery show in 2003 to the day Renee, now 52, wakes up in her own apartment, a rather miraculous turn of events. This happy ending for both sisters could not have been foretold by Beverly, who initially cringed at the thought of making a home back in North Carolina. In the film, she says drily, "I'm not here an hour before someone reminds me that I'm black, reminds me I'm in the South and a second-class citizen." As for caring for her sister, she protests, "I can hardly take care of my cats." The movie takes its tone from Ms. McIver, who is a wry, frank narrator with a comedian's timing. She and Jeanne Jordan, who made the film with her husband, Steven Ascher, met in 2002 at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, to which they had been awarded fellowships. Ms. Jordan was intrigued by Ms. McIver's paintings, which she found cinematic, "like movie stills," she said, and by her complicated personal history. MS. McIVER grew up in Greensboro, N.C., a city with a grim racial past. Her mother, Ethel, was a maid, a devout Baptist and a single mother, raising three daughters (Beverly, Renee and Roni, the middle sister) in Morningside Homes, a housing project that has been torn down. Renee, who was born mentally disabled and with epilepsy, was a violent child, particularly during adolescence, when she once threw Beverly down the stairs. When Beverly turned 16, her mother dropped this bomb: "I have something to tell you," she said. Your father is at the door. "It was never fully explained," Ms. McIver said. But it appears that while my mother was in this bad marriage, she and my father, who was a cab driver, had an affair. Ms. McIver will protest time and again that she is a lousy caretaker, but the film reveals otherwise. Despite the complexities of her relationships, she takes them on with gusto and humor. Her biological father, who maintained only the most tenuous connection with her when she was young, is one of many people she now keeps a watchful, warm eye on. A few years ago, as a way of explaining what she did for a living, she made a portrait for him. When he learned that people pay tens of thousands of dollars for her work, he put it in the closet. "He thinks it's safer there," Ms. McIver said, shaking her head. When Renee first moved in with her, Ms. McIver was still living in Arizona. Now a gentle adult with the interests of a very young third grader, Renee embraced her new life. She loved the way her sister outfitted her room to her taste, in pink and purple everything. She loved shopping for a new wardrobe, shedding "the church lady clothes," as Ms. McIver put it, for bright T-shirts and pants.