––Tony Max
"I was born legally blind in London, Ontario, Canada, having only ten percent of normal vision. I was enthusiastic about art, writing and music at an early age. My blindness was cured by cataract surgery as a teenager. As a result of the surgeries I contracted glaucoma in 1989 and have had three retinal detachments.
My vision is still impaired. I take eye drops twice a day and have frequent checkups with my ophthalmologist.
Much of my art portrays the beauty of west coast, where I live, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
My art captures the beautiful and vivid aspects of nature, emphasizing harmonious colours, patterns and dramatic compositions.
My art is in private collections in at least 16 countries, including Canada, the United States, Mexico, England, Scotland, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Chile, Japan, China, South Korea, Malaysia and Australia.
I studied fine art for one year at Fanshawe College in my home city of London, Ontario.
Realizing that I would be unfulfilled and unable to make a living by doing the kind of modern art that was encouraged there, I dropped out of the art program at the college after the first year.
I applied to the journalism programs at several colleges and universities in Ontario, and was accepted at all of them.
I moved to Toronto and enrolled in the journalism program at Ryerson University, which – along with Carleton – vied for the position of top journalism school in Canada.
Only a small percentage of the applicants were accepted into the journalism program at Ryerson. I believe that my applications were accepted by Ryerson University and the colleges I applied to because I had an excellent portfolio to show to the interviewer at the university. The portfolio was based on the clippings I had gathered of the articles and photographs I had made for the student newspaper during some of my spare time when I was a fine art student at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.
During some of my spare time as a journalism student, I began painting and silkscreening some of my fine art images. Also when I was still a journalism student, I had my first group show (in 1980) at the now defunct Del Bello Gallery in Toronto, and (in 1981) my first solo show, also at the Del Bello Gallery.
For several years my preferred medium was heavy-body acrylics. I've also printed several serigraph (silkscreen) editions by hand. Additionally, I've tried traditional oils, watercolours, gouache, pastels, pencils, pencil crayons, markers, stone lithography, etching, mezzotint, woodcut, airbrushing and fluid acrylics.
I now paint exclusively with water-mixable oil, because I find that it's the least difficult medium of those I've tried, it gives the most pleasing results, its longevity is long, its toxicity is low, the colours can be vibrant, mistakes can be painted over and the paint can be reworked longer than acrylics."
