Seeing comes before words.
A great director said to me once, it’s either right or it isn’t.
That I can relate to in terms of what balance is, firstly it’s about intuition then technique to achieve it.

Max is strongly influenced by his work in film and TV, designing a project to help tell the story.
The story is different each time, by using locations,architecture,colour and texture Max helps craft the story, bring it to life.
He knows that more one studies detail the more variation, association and atmosphere one finds.
Max is equally intrigued by the notion of how one might recall, for instance, a TV series.How a seemingly linear set of images and events form into a cohesive memory.

It’s equally a question as to whether stories are circular or complete and parts come into and out of focus, information becomes close up or recedes in scale and relevance.
The idea of balance comes from how and if all disparate parts hang together and make a whole.
The first question Max always asks of a Drama, or a of its component parts, is ‘what is the tone of it?’
Then it’s a riff on that idea and tone.
The same applies to painting in a more organic manner, the tone needs to be specific and be its own story.
Max draws on much varied visual imagery including the very nature of how we receive, and how much, visual information we sift and take for granted.Within this the act of painting still bears great relevance for Max and distils into a purer timeless form many of those digital, organic and real life influences questioning and upholding the joy of the basics of form and colour.


Born in 1959 Max Gottlieb grew up in North London and attended Hampstead Comprehensive school.
Self taught as a Production Designer and Artist Max starting work in the 90s on music videos then commercials and onto his first  Feature film ‘Shopping’ staring Jude Law and Sadie Frost, Max honed his craft moving between different formats, more recently taking on multi series TV with such series as The Tunnel, Marcella and ITVs ‘Strangers’.



Balance
Distill
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Max Gottlieb