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Max Gottlieb

Artist Statement

Max Gottlieb has worked as a film production designer for over thirty years.While he has been painting for the last three years his provenance has been his experience in interpreting films visually and the expertise with which he collaborates with constructors in realizing film produc- tions.

Max Creates Abstract paintings with acrylic on canvas combining gestural marks with discip- lined hard edge shapes and symbols. Using varied tools such as mop,large hand made rub- ber scrapers, pallet knife and squeegee Max explores organic and gestural marks that have their own integrity. Contrasting these using masking tape and stencils with spray paint and brushes to for hard edge and more symbolic shapes.So contrasting two different styles, or- ganic versus plastic.

Colour is very vibrant in Max’ painting.A feature that has emerged from experience in film where sets can be lit to achieve striking vibrancy.Contrasting muted flat colour fields with tex- tured bright and dayglo shapes.
Researching and drawing on ipad combining photo ref 3d programs and drawing programs max develops ideas and imagery that are the backbone of ideas explored on canvas.The final work always follows its own integrity in resolving composition, colour and shape while drawing on the researched work

Max work is inspired by current and contemporary ideas of colour and image and how we communicate and depict the world.While ultimately evoking atmosphere this and his film work gives Max a vast vault of images to examine.Colour combinations, current forms influenced by media and our online world,emogies,symbols,text abbreviations, iconography and the very nature of how we view the world largely from 2D devices. Many Titles are based on these ideas.By utilising gestural mark making in contrast to precise graphic shapes and symbols Max explores the dicotomy between the analogue world and the digital, the physical and the virtu- al.Drawing on influences from Turners most abstract later paintings to computer imagery and pattern questions the process itself of how we communicate and what is knowledge.

Certain motifs reoccur, the use of stripes can evoke Candy stripe, wrapping paper or hazard symbols, all very man made.They are a series of questions composed and contrasted.

Having worked in film for over thirty years Max felt the need to look in a more detailed way and to shift the perspective somewhat to refresh his focus and ask certain pressing questions about the nature of things.While filming is a very collaborative process achieving large scale drama he wanted to go back to basics and alter the discipline.

While using symbols and associated meaning Max is also aware that a painting is a flat object based on its surface in a similar way a film is a flat version of a 3D world.Also aware that the visual presence is taken on its own merit as much as the inner meaning as in film where ‘the look’,the costume, the make up and the chiaroscuro is an important social currency.

So these painting are questions about the nature of depiction itself and the techniques used.Aiming to express the mix of chaos and balance, natural versus plastic, the order of things and how they coexist.

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