Max Naylor

Max undertook his training at Falmouth College of Art and London's Drawing School before beginning his career in painting.  Max currently lives and works in Bristol, UK, and teaches at London's Royal Drawing School.

Max creates paintings using oil on canvas and smaller drawings using archival ink on cotton paper.  He is particularly well known for his semi-surreal imagery of cityscapes and skylines that are drawn from memory and imagined spaces.  While his ink drawings are made quickly his larger paintings take much longer.  For Max, the drawings in ink continually inform his oil paintings keeping his work fresh and dynamic. 

Balancing scrupulous detail and controlled compositions with dynamic doodling and instinctive creative direction, Max densely packs his dreamlike illustrations with shapes and colours which scramble for space on the page. By cleverly braiding together elements of Art Deco, Expressionism and traditional Japanese woodblock prints his landscapes are heightened with character and imagination.  A colour palette, that could be described as magical or mystical, gives the impression that his landscapes are not of this world or, in Max's words, "that night and day are existing simultaneously."  With this cross-pollination of styles and alien lighting effects, Max's paintings and ink drawings make for a visually stimulating feast with every observation.

Max's unique colour palette and style are likely to have evolved from his culturally diverse experiences, having been awarded residencies in cities that include Delhi, Los Angeles, Tuscany and Glasgow  As well as extensive group and solo exhibitions across the UK, Max was the 2017 Winner of the Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary 2017 and the Winner of the Jackson's Open Art Prize 2016.