Max Lawrence at The American Center for Artists

PETER MAX LAWRENCE: THE ARTIST AS AUDIENCE BY ROBERTA SOLTEA A few years ago I was having dinner in a restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri -- I was there covering a convention for the company I was working for at the time -- and I met a local man who took me out for a night of unabashed drinking and hard conversation. This tall, blonde middle american turned out to be the artist, Peter MAX Lawrence. In a recent interview in Lawrence's studio, the artist spoke of his newly developed techniques and how they reflect his philosophy of painting. "If I can call it a philosophy," he modestly declared. "It's best reflected in my gravity paintings," Lawrence explained. "I recently discovered this method of painting with latex paint, where I put paint in a bucket calculating the volume of the bucket beforehand, and then I pour it on the canvas." He never touches the paint. After pouring different colors of paint in the bucket, Lawrence explains, the paint is cut with a stick. This semi- violent sexual disturbance of the paint predetermines what colors will later emerge on the canvas. "I'm well aware of the 'spin' painting technique employed in the sixties for bookmarks and stationary. It's very different. Though people who like 'spin' painted things will probably like my paintings." Lawrence lit a cigarette and sat down. "See, this couch is an animal print. My skin is freckled. There is a pattern, but also not. It's not planned. Except by evolution and chance. The sky. The coral reefs. All these things are beautiful and look the way they do because of the physical forces acting on them at all times. Well, gravity painting is the same way." After cutting the paint, the bucket is then poured in a very exact way onto a prepared canvas. "I'm not worried about protecting my technique," Lawrence says. "You can explain it in as much detail as you want. If someone else starts doing gravity paintings, then it's even better. I want everyone to do them. I will have to see the end result though; see if their paintings are as enforced, as free." The canvas is then tilted at a variety of angles guiding the paint to cover the entire surface. "I paint very quickly," Lawrence says. "Maybe it's because I'm young. Maybe I'm impatient. People can say that if they want. I don't care, as long as I like what I get in the end." Lawrence isn't the only one who likes what he gets in the end, either; his paintings have soared in popularity in the past year, creating a buzz in everywhere but the artist's home town. "I would move somewhere else, where my art is better appreciated, but he life here is really easy for an artist. And my family is here. Right now that's important." Lawrence has kept a safe distance here from all of his admirers, too. It may be a cliché, but for a young artist, flattery can kill. This article is reprinted by permission of Big Mag Magazine, Pineville, NJ., copyright restricted. August 2000 BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR: Roberta Soltea has spent her entire life on the road. Her mother was a traveling saleswoman for a large plastic packaging company and took Roberta with her as a small child. Emigrating to Italy at the age of Nineteen, Roberta suddenly found herself in possession of an antique typewriter, a ream of paper and year with nothing to do. She wrote her first novel in that year, Memoirs of a Child . Winning the Casa Bonita Prize for Best Novel, Roberta was dragged kicking and screaming back to the United States. Refusing to live in New York City, she ended up in Summit, New Jersey. There she landed a job for a technology company writing instruction manuals for artificial intelligence machines, commonly referred to as robots.

Biography:

Max Lawrence was born in 1977, in Topeka, Kansas. He was adopted as an infant and raised in Kansas City, Kansas. He is primarily a self-taught visual artist working in a variety of media that include painting, video, soundscape, and performance art. Lawrence is an extremely prolific visual expressionist. His diverse body of work outlines an epic of transformation and metamorphosis. The presences in his work appear as recognizable memories grounded literally in the circumstances or backgrounds of the medium itself. Transcending the ideals or imagination of childhood with an amalgam of puberty, self-perception, and sexual identity, he is currently focusing on issues that concern his struggle as a gay man surviving in Middle America. Monica Peck

Galleries:

Galerie Gora 460 Ste. Catherine West Suite #502 Montreal, QC H3B 1A7 Canada "Gravity Boots" (Four Person Group Show) August 14th-31th 2001 Kansas City, Kansas Public Library West Wyandotte Branch 1737 N. 82nd St. Kansas City, KS 66112 "Queer Nation" Solo Exhibition May 2002 Pedestrian Gallery 1620 W. 39th Street Kansas City, MO 64111 Group Exhibition July 2001 Prosperos Summer Festival Kansas City, MO 64111 "39th Street Mojo" Group Exhibition (Poetry, Music & Visual Art for Local Artist) June 2001 Tribal Grill 18081/2 39th St. Kansas City, MO 64111 "Big Train and the Mystery Game" Solo Exhibition May - June 2001 Kelvin Gallery 1317 Union St. Kansas City, MO 64101 "2000 Retrospective" Solo Exhibition March 24th - April 20th Kansas City, Kansas Public Library Main Branch 625 Minnesota Kansas City, Kansas 66106 "The Man Who Was Too Loud" Solo Exhibition February 12th – March 9th 2001 Planet Gallery 3738 Broadway Kansas City, MO 64111 "Lunching with Lesbians" Solo Exhibition December 2 - January 8 2001 Tribal Grill 18081/2 39th St. Kansas City, MO 64111 "Squirrel Trap" Solo Exhibition December 2000 - January 2001 River Market Brewery 500 Walnut Kansas City, MO 64106 "Open Studios" October 7th – 8th 2000 Tribal Grill 18081/2 39th St. Kansas City, MO 64111 "Fiasco Part Deaux" Solo Exhibition October 1st – November 1st 2000 Westport Coffee House 4010 Pennsylvania Kansas City, MO 64111 "New works " Solo exhibition September 3rd –October 1st 2000 Muddy’s on Main Kansas City, MO 64111 Aug.28th -Nov.1st 2000 Lotus Gallery 811 Massachusetts Lawrence, KS 66044 "Situations" Solo exhibition August 1st – October 7th Tribal Grill 18081/2 39th St. Kansas City, MO 64111 "FIASCO" Solo Exhibition June 1-30, 2000 NewWorks Gallery 201 Wyandotte Kansas City, MO 64105 "Figuratively Speaking" Group show with Maliaka Bugjo & Meredith Johnson April 7-22, 2000 Self Study Program 1996- Art History with Focus on "Modern Masters" 1997- Experimental Media and Design Concepts 1998- Emphasis on Composition with Oils 1999- Concentration on Human Form with Oils & Inks 2000- Color Theory & Pure Abstraction with Latex on Canvas - Gouache, Acrylic, and Ink Studies 2001- Pen & Ink, Mix Media, Oil on Wood, SoundScapes & Installation

Exhibitions: