Brand New Me

1 canvas

20 pints of the artist's blood

5 years

2011 – 2016

Dimensions: 3.3m x 2m

Materials: Twenty pints (11.4 liters) of the artist’s blood on canvas

The canvas depicts a monumentally sized logo made entirely of Maxwell’s blood.

Using blood for its connotations of worship, the work can be seen as a sacrifice to the transcendent power of brands.

The logo itself originates from a motif of four verticle lines which Maxwell had been drawing since he was a child. Adapting those innocent lines to create his own logo is an act of selling himself out.

This work comments upon the obsession we have with brands and how we ourselves become human adverts for large companies.

Drawn Out

4 rolls of paper

10,000,000 hand-drawn lines

1 year in isolation

2014 – 2015

Dimensions: 10m x 0.5m

Materials: Pen on four rolls of paper

This drawing consists of four rolls of paper, on which Maxwell repeatedly inscribed the same motif of four verticle lines that found their way onto most of his earliest drawings. The work is compiled of approximately ten million of these lines.

Maxwell chose to use this same method of mark-making he started as an infant as they represent the artistic spontaneity of a child, they are an expression still devoid of any of the cultural/historical/societal influenced that have his creativity as an adult.

The decision to move into isolation for a year to transfer these marks onto paper is the modus operandi he used to detach himself from as many distractions as possible.

Because of the level of detail, from a distance the four large rolls of paper appear as single lines on the wall, causing the overall piece to take on a fractal pattern as the four rolls resemble the individual set of four lines that fill them.