Max Middlewood was born in 1998 in the East Midlands and has resided in Bristol and Devon for the past five years. He embarked on his painting journey nearly four years ago as a means to cope with illness. The decision to start painting was entirely unexpected, as he had never displayed an interest in art throughout his life. However, faced with severe illness and the uncertainty of his early twenties, a deep desire to create something meaningful suddenly surged within him. Regardless of whether anyone else would ever see it, he felt compelled to infuse his life with purpose and to express his intense emotions on paper, canvas, and eventually through installations showcased in galleries and exhibitions.
Now, painting has become his foremost passion, and he has since developed a distinctive style of painting and installing. In his initial years of painting, he participated in over 35 exhibitions, and he eagerly anticipates what the future holds.
Throughout his artistic journey and various experiments, he has cultivated a signature style characterized by a vibrant, chaotic blend of figuration, abstraction, text, diagrams, symbolism, surrealism, and childlike doodles, which he aptly named 'organised chaos.' He intertwines serious, thought-provoking themes with humor, irony, and silliness, evoking a paradoxical sensation in his works.
His objective is to transform every composition into an interactive experience, packing each canvas with so much content that viewers discover something new with every viewing. He extends this approach to his installations and previous solo exhibitions. His art serves as an intensely personal diary entry but remains open to multiple interpretations as viewers navigate the intricate web of diagrams and doodles.
While he employs recurring motifs as signature marks in his pieces, no two paintings are identical. Over the past few years, he has developed these motifs. In addition to his diagrammatic works, he also creates portraits and figurative pieces that unite blobs and shapes to form whimsical creatures and faces, bringing surreal characters to life on canvas. He has also expanded his artistic expression into the realm of murals and installations over the past two years.
His work serves as a unique, self-contained universe, inviting others to glimpse into his realm of chaos and share in the experience.