CV at the bottom of page

A story of beginnings…

A decade ago I was 24 years old and three years into my career as an investment banker living and working on Wall Street. I was stagnant and stale, rotting under fluorescent lighting to the endless ring of frothing clients. I was savage and hungry, devout and uninteresting, sanctified in the worship of the almighty dollar.

I was miserable, trapped by my ego, pride, and old dreams. Wall Street had been my goal since 5th grade when I became a ten year old titan buying and selling Pokemon cards on the playground. 

I remember, 1999, buying a first edition holographic Charizard off Tailor Aikens in a moment beneath the monkey bars for $10. I sold it on this brand new thing called eBay a week later for $320 - a fortune to my tiny self. You see I liked Pokemon - the characters and cartoon and game, but what I LOVED was the madness it created in the schoolyard. It was my first exposure to financial markets and I became obsessed.

That obsession followed me for the next fifteen years as I majored in finance and left for New York to swing my dick and conquer the world.

Now this is an abbreviated speedrun of my life, but three years later I tried to kill myself. More than once. I was working 16 hour days 7 days a week puppeted by a psychopathic boss who preyed upon my ego and ambition. I had no real friends and a realization creeping in that the people I idolized had nothing but money. I was working alongside the former employees of Stratton Oakmont, aka the Wolf of Wall Street firm, or at least the ones who had avoided prison. They had nice cars and nice watches and nice apartments, but wives that wouldn't sleep with them and kids that wouldn't call. They had nothing except money. They were disgustingly rich and morally bankrupt. The kind of people who would lie to your grandmother for a slice of her pension and I found, day by day, that my morals were starting to loosen to their standard. I started this journey because I found market theory fascinating, but surprise surprise, the difference between theory and reality on Wall Street is a shit ton of sociopaths and I was becoming one of them.

I hated myself. I was sick and exhausted, my body in revolt with a plague of autoimmune issues that nearly bankrupted me in their treatment. I had burnt myself down to nothing in pursuit of money and was down to none. I had lost sight fully of the mechanism of markets I loved, for their derivative - profit. I drank and swallowed pills and stood on the ledge of my 30th story building and looked in the mirror crying desperate tears to myself with no one to hear them for I was too damn proud to tell the people who loved me on the other side of America that I was deeply in need of help.

I guess that was the start of my first adventure. I had lost control and like Tres Fronteras in the Amazon, or my time with the headhunters of Nagaland, I was left with only two choices. Go or fold. I'm glad I didn't fold.

I closed down my business and quit my firm. I abandoned my career and the dreams of my ten year old titan. It was a lengthy process, but in its completion came providence by the name of Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy. A freak storm reaching high to the north that combined with a full moon tide to drown lower Manhattan in twenty feet of water.

I ducked the police evacuation hiding in a closet, filled my bathtub full of water, bought nuts and canned food, pulled out cash, and survived - the lone resident of an abandoned skyscraper without running water or electricity for the next 30 days. A building meant for two thousand people and in it was only me - hiking 30 flights of stairs every day in a pitch black stairwell illuminated by a green glowstick.

The day after that massive storm was the most surreal and transformative experience of my life as I sought to explore the ruins of downtown Manhattan.

My transformation began with a fish on a treadmill.

You heard that right.

In my exploration I wandered the vacant halls of my luxury mausoleum, observing the scumline of history on the windows which marked the stormwater’s heights all the way up to the second story and In the building’s gym I lost my mind. There was a dead fish on the silt stained treadmill. 

A fucking dead fish on the treadmill. A blue fish covered in dirt and grime and silt on a tangled bed of waterplants on top of the tread of a $3000 piece of gym equipment. I stared at it for minutes, hours …. more …. long enough for excitement to crack like lightning through the vacant hollow of depression that had ruled my life for years. I wanted to document this. I was compelled to document all of this. I was engaged and curious and excited and delighted by the sheer absurdity of what life can be.

Fast forward and I had bought a camera and set about wandering across New York City learning my first form of creative expression. I completely left finance, going from Wall Street to street peddler, selling my photos on the Brooklyn Bridge next to a Russian hotdog vendor. My old colleagues would often walk by, thinking I was insane—and I thought the same of them.

Fast forward another year and I was being awarded a $15,000 photography prize for one of my photos. This one.

This is the moment my whole world changed. The moment my mind shifted - and its pretty cool to have a photograph of it. My Disney Princess moment. Staring off into the blue, some 80ft down, im looking at a school of thousands upon thousands of jackfish. So many you cant see through the swarm of it. I get the tingle. No, not the pee tingle; That primal twitch that starts in your spine, runs up to the back of your head and down into your stomach pushing all the way down to your balls. SOMETHING IS THERE. I flipper around and out of the blue comes a 25 foot whaleshark. Straight at me. With a few meters to go it ever so effortlessly dips down, gliding right below me. So close my body was shoved in the wake of its tail. How could I ever go back to finance?

I purely pursued photo for the next three years, picking up some clients in fashion, learning the craft and constantly challenging myself to pursue new styles and technique.

In 2017 I entered into physical art. What started as experiments with silver gelatin and eBay chemistry in an old school photo darkroom turned into painted photography mixed media.

2019 my resolution was to learn how to draw and conquer my fear of the blank page. I was told hands are the hardest thing to draw, so I started there. At the end of the year I created this piece, Aeon, my first large piece made from nothing.

… and I’ve been painting ever since. I recently came back to this composition as a five year interogation of my technique, and the many lessons learned.

2019 was also the year I wrote my first book. I now have four on my bookshelf.

The Next Chapter

In 2023 following my deportation from Turkey and arrival in Amsterdam I threw an art show and did something new - a formal night of storytelling. I regailed a moment of mystery from the Amazon rainforest and behind the hungry eyes of so many listeners, my paintings behind them transformed. They were no longer paintings, they were invitations. Invitations to stories.

I have alway loved a good story - the more adventure the better - and I have over the past years collected quite a few and made many more. I enjoy traveling into the unkown - into the far reaches of our world and the liminal spaces between man and myth. This is where I thrive. I go in search of mystery, in search of fantasy made real and the quiet subtext of a place between its moments of extreme.

2024 brought me to the lands of Konyak headhunters and the most stressful exploration of my life - the experience transformed into a novel On the Border of Midnight and Madness. Currently unpublished, I need some space from the experience before I can finish it.

and I write this now in 2025 three days away from a flight to a jungle called Bardiya to track tigers.

I will continue my reach into the unkown, my study of myth and story, and the creation of original novels and paintings reflecting my time amongst indigenous peoples on the fringes of our world.

Cheers,

Max

Abbreviated CV

2014 - Quit Corporate Finance/ Identity Crisis Pt. 1
2015 - Bought a Camera | Won a $15,000 photography prize
2016 - Identity Crisis Volume II: Despair!
2017 - Started creating physically in the darkroom
2018 - Started Drawing
2019 - Started Painting/Published my first book
2020 - Dogged Pursuit | Trapped in France | I LOVE THIS
2021 - Three solo exhibitions in NYC - Published two more books.
2022 - Amazon, Pakistan, Nepal. Learned to track tigers. Climbed mountains.
2023 - Living in Istanbul. Deported from Istanbul. Living in Amsterdam. Painting like a madman.
2024 - Three long months in the tribal lands of NE India. Sort of taken hostage. Published another book.

Solo Exhibitions

• 2024 – Across a Land of Dying Gods, Bunk Hotel, Utrecht

• 2024 – Between the Shadows of Eden (book release & exhibition), Toqueur Gallery, Amsterdam

• 2024 – Midnight and Madness (Storytelling), The Cave, Amsterdam

• 2023 – Jungle Stories, Lifely, Amsterdam

• 2021 – Solo Exhibition, Thirty Six Gallery, NY

• 2021 – Solo Painting Exhibition, Bowery Union, NYC

• 2021 – Solo Photography Exhibition, Bushwick Darkroom, NYC

• 2019 – Solo Painting Exhibition, Con Artist Collective, NYC

• 2019 – Solo Photography Exhibition, Bushwick Darkroom, NYC

• 2017 – Solo Multi-Media Exhibition, Private Event, NYC

Group Shows

• 2024 – New Voices, Toquer, Amsterdam

• 2024 – Artfair, Westergas, Amsterdam

• 2023 – Animals, Toquer, Amsterdam

• 2023 – Untitled, Lifely, Amsterdam

• 2021 – Emulsions, The Holy Art, London

• 2020 – Art Residency Open Studios, Château Orquevaux, France

• 2019 – Constitution, Con Artist Collective, NYC

• 2019 – Surrealism Group Show, Bowery Union, NYC

• 2018 – Ovals, Bowery Union, NYC

• 2018 – Abstract, Con Artist Collective, NYC

• 2018 – Halloween Show, Con Artist Collective, NYC

• 2018 – Virago Show, Hosted by Dr. Linda Dahl, NYC

• 2018 – Residency Showcase, Con Artist Collective, NYC

• 2018 – Abstract, Con Artist Collective, NYC

• 2018 – Bones, Con Artist Collective, NYC

Artist Residency:

- Writing Exile, Sundarbans, India, Winter 2024
- Berlin Art Institute, Germany - (accepted, yet to attend)
- Iasi Art Residency, Romania - (accepted, yet to attend)
- Château Orquevaux, France, March - August 2020
- Exile, Siargao, Philippines, Winter 2020
- Con Artist Residency, NYC, April
- December 2019 - ACE HOTEL RESIDENCY - March 2019
- Exile, Siargao, Philippines, Winter 2019
- Bushwick Darkroom, NYC, Fall 2018
- Maderas Village, Nicaragua, Spring 2016

Writing:

PUBLISHED:
Jesus Christ and Other Swear Words – Lit Fic/Dark Humor | Novella | Published, 2019
What was on that Moon? – Lit Fic/Dark Humor | Novella | Published, 2022
The Diary of Fluff Fluff – Experimental fiction | Published, 2023
Between the Shadows of Eden – Literary Memoire |Published, 2024

In Progress:
On the Borders of Midnight and Madness – Magical Realism | 70k written
Benediction – Speculative Fiction | 50k written
Dear Liary, – Poetry & Short Story collection | 20k written

Notable Explorations:

2025 – Tharu, Nepal (1 month) – Tracking tigers in the jungles of Western Nepal living in a Tharu village.
2025 – Himalayas, Nepal (1 month) – Trekking the Three Passes.
2024 – Northeast India (3 months) – Immersed in tribal communities, navigating cultural, political, and environmental complexities.
2023 – Tharu, Nepal (2 month) – Trekking through Bardiya National Park, encountering tigers on foot.
2022 – Annapurna Massif, Nepal (1 month) – High-altitude trekking to explore Himalayan landscapes and endurance in extreme conditions.
2022 – Bedouin, Arabian Desert (1 month) – Traveled with Bedouins, learning desert survival and oral storytelling traditions.
2022 – Wakhi, Northern Pakistan (1 month) – Lived among the Wakhi in the Karakoram Mountains, studying their adaptation to extreme environments.
2022 – Tikuna, Amazon Rainforest (3 months) – Lived with the Tikuna, studying indigenous knowledge, mythology, and the relationship between environment and storytelling.

Awards and Recognition:

- National Geographic Contest 2015 Finalist
- Toyota & Weather.com | Grand Prize Winner. First of 32,000 submissions. 2016
 - Jerry Goldstein Foundation Award 2021
- Featured Work at the Yellowstone Art Museum