Review, September 2005
Exploring Unseen Side of the Everyday
Still Life on the Move
Artist Max Lieberman captures the beauty of everyday life in his still life paintings. A chopped tomato, bulb of garlic, a vase and bowl are some of the subjects he explores in his first NT exhibition Still Life. The Sydney based artist also captures pegs, toy cars, shaving brushes and old kitchen scales. “A landscape is about a place, like a portrait is about a person – still life suggests something more,” he said.
Lieberman said his paintings were an exploration of the philosophical, emotional and spiritual issues, such as mortality, time, space, reality and illusion, the seen and the unseen. “What is it about this thing that makes it so beautiful and interesting?” he said. Lieberman works on different canvas sizes that he said added a level of challenge to his work. “Some of them are so small I can hold them in my hand when I am painting them,” he said.
Lieberman has won numerous prizes for his painting and has been a four-time finalist for the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship. “My work takes on a more psychological and philosophical approach,” he said. “I am interested in the drama and tension created between objects by their arrangement in a painting. I often paint fewer objects than is conventional in this genre.”
Flora Liveris, Northern Territory News, Friday, September 2, 2005