Maxwell Doig
Maxwell Doig - Rooftops,
Mixed media
Maxwell Doig uses the male figure as a visual metaphor for his ideas and feelings.
Continually working with various media, he is equally at ease with the soft rough qualities of pastel or the hard fine lines of drypoint etching. His paintings are heavily textured and he mixes sand, pigment, paint or glue to build up layers.
Often the figures in his work are painted from an unusual perspective and when combined with strong shadows and rich textures an almost unnerving, surreal atmosphere is present. His work is always influenced by his immediate environment.
The factories and industry of Slaithwaite where Maxwell Doig lives are also present, and even during his travels courtesy of the Villiers David prize he was drawn to the same subject.
His figures were often telephone engineers, carrying stones or descending down manholes. Even Maxwell Doig's ‘sunbathers’ never seem far away from a manual task or a manmade construction of some sort.
Bridget Hayden has written, “His figures remain anonymous, completely preoccupied with their own thoughts. This offers an insight into his frequent inclusion of unconventional viewpoints, which never makes us feel we are interrupting the subjects self-contained struggle or tranquility”.