About the Artist • CV • Articles
C.J.M. (Max) Elliott, B.F.A.
Photo by Roy Andersen
Max Elliott has called the mountains of Western Canada home since 1980. Educated at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Max has created drawings, paintings, mixed media collages, jewelry, prints, mosaics, ceramic pieces, designs for banners and interpretive signposts, poetry, and a children’s book reflecting her love of an ever-changing and inspirational mountain environment.
Max’s exhibitions include the solo show Glacier-fed and the group show Elemental Inspiration: Out of the Wildfire, both at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. Her work can be found in public, corporate, and private collections world-wide.
Max currently resides in beautiful Banff National Park, where she can indulge her “glacier habit” by hiking, scrambling, sketching and painting in some of the world’s most extraordinary locations.
Artist’s Statement
Water, rock, ice, clouds. Why is it that we can feel least encumbered in the high, wind-scoured, barren and most desolate of places — is it because they are stripped bare, in stark contrast to the meaningless sea of choice with which we are sometimes confronted in daily life?
Is it because our senses are stimulated by constant change, though as we stare at the glacier’s headwall imagining its movement over time, we know that to all appearances it will remain almost exactly the same?
Perhaps it is the recognition of a sense of age, and of one’s small place in the workings of this wondrous planet.
Or maybe it’s just a matter of savouring the Silence and the Freedom.
— Max Elliott, journal entry, 2002