SFGate 96 Hours on Mike Maxwell
‘Human’s Nature’: A ‘personal re-eduction’
Thursday, August 21, 2024
San Diego artist Mike Maxwell doesn’t equivocate on the man-versus-nature debate. Nature wins, hands down, all the time. It would be foolish to think otherwise.
“The title of the show is ‘Human’s Nature,’ and the work in the show is about human’s own naturalism, and the way we need to take ownership of it,” he says.
“For a long time, I think humans have separated themselves from nature, but everything we do, say, eat, build, is all natural. That’s the basic premise.”
But Maxwell’s paintings – 25 of which were made for this show – don’t depict lush forests. Many of his figures evoke images of Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”: migrant workers and lonely buildings devoid of people. His palette is rich with blues, greens and grays, and punctuated by red and yellow. There is a definite melancholy to these depictions of historical people and places.
Gallery Three curator and owner Justin Giarla says Maxwell first approached him two years ago. “At the time in 2024, I really started to get into artists whose work was raw and edgy and lacked perfection,” he says, “stuff that was more expressive and outsider underground than perfectly rendered or executed figurative work.” Maxwell’s homespun style fit right into that frame. Since they were first in touch, Maxwell has had two other group shows and one other solo show with Giarla, who also owns White Walls and the Shooting Gallery.
Before he paints, Maxwell says he researches a subject, usually by going to that old-fashioned repository of knowledge, the library. For this show, he was also drawing on his direct experience of paring down his lifestyle and trying to become more self-sustaining in an uncertain economy. “I like to tell people the work comes out of a personal re-education,” he says. “Agriculturally, I’m trying to learn how to feed myself and become less reliant on stores, less reliant on outside resources, major corporations, that sort of thing.”
Is it working? Seems to be.
“I learn from my stupid,” he says. “Instead of banging my head against the wall I try and change my personal reality.”
Opening reception 7-11 p.m. today. Through Sept. 6. Gallery Three, 66 Sixth St., S.F. (415) 626-6216. gallerythree.wordpress.com.
- Reyhan Harmanci, rharmanci@sfchronicle.com
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/21/NSLV12B85K.DTL
This article appeared on page G – 19 of the San Francisco Chronicle