« It's a way of thinking and probably a way of life. »
Born in Angers, France in 1992, Maxime Le Guyader is a painter living in Brussels, Belgium. His life today is split between painting, tattooing, sewing, skateboarding and collecting art stuffs from my travels.
He would define his painting as brut, naive, figurative, primitive and sometimes abstract even if he don't think there is such definition.
He uses different mediums from cupboard to canvas, he likes to find most of his supplies and to give a second life to any materials. Attracted in big scale artworks because of the freedom of movement it gives, he find a facility to express his self in it, a real transmission of what he has in mind during the creative process.
« Art allows to discuss any subjects and to confront opinions. »
Maxime usually paint Masks and write things around, he likes to play with words and paradoxicaly to talk about society and sensitive subjects with a touch of humor.
He wants people to react to what they are looking/reading and why not change there point of view on variable subjects.
Art allows to discuss any subjects and to confront opinions.
It's a way where he can express his thoughts behind a canvas.
Also he is influenced by the tattoo art world, one of the oldest art known by many civilisations through the time. With a tattooer approach, he wants to bring a new version of the old designs in a poetic way, mixing them with a touch of engraving, fine lines and dot-works. Also attracted into tribal art and old rock caves designs he tries to translate them on skin and canvas. Tattooing is a collaboration between an artist and an human body, viewing each mark as a sort of expression.
In General, he likes to experiment and he can be interested in many tools and techniques. He always try to make something new and special, something that nobody have seen before. To Maxime it’s important that the watchers can create their own interpretation. He let them free to discuss and interpret the paintings as they want.
Most of the time, his imagination controls the movements even if he got a special idea of what he is painting. Trusting his feelings he let them improvise for him.
He mostly use acrylics, pastels, spray paints and ink. There are easy to find, to use and they dry fast.
Most of the time he starts paintings with an idea, something he probably saw or heard before, but naturally he will improvised on the moment, depending the materials he has and the mood he is in.
« To me it’s about sharing the way we experience life and the way we create our own reality. »
When Maxime starts a painting he directly go for it, no preparation. It starts by doing a background and that will automatically build the future painting. For the rest he let it comes as easy as it can go. Some paintings will takes few minutes and others will take months, depending the size or the message I want to deliver. He usually works on different paintings at the same time, he likes the balance processing that way. Everything can change during the making and that's what art is all about, you can paint over and over, you are the only one deciding when it’s done or not.
Maxime works in his own studio in Brussels. A place full of small objects and weird things that submerge him into another world. Passionate by flea-markets, he loves to collect all kinds of objects, creating a very inspirational environment. The studio is a part of his creating process, it's the space where he feels free to create and express his self surrounded by many objects helping him to link his ideas. A very personal and private environment where only few people are allowed.
To Maxime art is a tool, a universal language that everybody is free to interpret and learn from, a way to discover new perspectives. Art plays with our emotions and with something that stimulates our individual thoughts and gives powerful reactions through our senses.
Art involves imagination, conceptual ideas and beauty. To Maxime it’s about sharing the way we experience life and the way we create our own reality. Finally he thinks it’s all about leaving personal marks on our natural habitat.
Usually feeling a natural obsession to paint, he always got to feed the need. Ideas and inspirations comes from whatever like movies, books, pictures, street art, tattoos, music, society subjects or others artworks. He feels like he will never be able to paint all those ideas, but he is trying to do the most of it. Some ideas disappears and new ones comes, it's a perpetual circle of inspiration.
He has always been attracted to brut/primitive artworks, when it can be emotionally deep and simple. He is also fascinated by the ancestral rock caves, the tribal art, African masks and statuettes.
He always felt like creating without knowing where this motivation comes from. An inexplicable force that takes him over, like an invisible power ordering him to paint. To Maxime this obsession is more than a passion, it's a way of thinking and probably a way of life.
