Maxim Artist Biography
Maxim is an artist in the music industry as well as the creative world of Fine Art.
All of Maxim's work seems to take place within a storm, dark clouds swirling in his fictional sky. “I like storms because it feels like a storm is kind of washing all the evil away. I find it quite comforting.” He is drawn towards ideas around a total artwork – an experience rather than an object on a wall. Work where light, sound, scent and physicality all influence how you look at something. “I always find when I go to galleries I always look at paintings and its almost one dimensional, you're not really feeling anything from it - some paintings you do but I feel like if I go to a gallery I want to feel like I'm in it and the whole room is part of it… a sensory type of thing.” His studio – where he creates both music and art - is always kept in darkness. “When I write music at night the door is totally shut and I always have the lights down,” he notes. “I never open the blinds. I paint with the door closed. It’s just dark. I always have to create in the false reality.”
Just as his musical background has influenced his art, art has in turn fed into his wider creative practise. At the heart of his approach is a love and appreciation of freedom. “I was always restricting myself when I did music, never knowing how to let go and let it be what it is… That’s one thing I've learned about art - there isn’t really mistakes in art is there?”
'I tried to keep my art separate from my life in The Prodigy; I wanted my art to be accepted in its own right and was worried about being criticized as a musician trying to be an artist. All of the work is just me; whether it’s art or music. In music you are always aiming for perfection, you’re never 100% happy. Art is much more liberating than that; even mistakes can be beautiful. People think I’m being controversial for the sake of it, but that just isn’t me. I have a dark side to myself, I’m drawn to the dark and that is what I want to explore.I want viewers to experience that darkness and see a side of themselves in it. It’s not just surface, it’s about going deeper, mining something, swirling around in the storm, in the madness.'