The Origin of Line
Paintings by Max Armen

Local artist Max Armen uses his childhood drawings as the subject matter for his most recent body of paintings.  In 2011, he began an unusual exploration through thousands of drawings that his parents had mindfully saved.   These were works that Armen had made between the ages of 2 and 6, a time before he could fully read or write.  As he mined this rich body of material, it helped him recall a potent time when he was exploring his world visually with pen and paper while processing and expressing his young feelings. But, even at that age, he was laying a foundation for what would become a fully creative life.  Today, working in his Turners Falls studio, Max Armen says, The world of the painting studio has now unfolded to give me the opportunity to re-experience the original drawings. It feels as if my work is now an archeological dig into a substance of figures and forms as deeply familiar to me as they are unexpected and unknown. I can remember vividly the irresistible urge to draw and see again the world of animals, people, trucks, buildings and sounds emerge before me on the paper. This format allows me to study and channel again the expressive language of line at its most curious and uninhibited form: the raw potential for life that I saw clearly at the beginning of life.