Max is your quintessential outback artist. Everything colourful, vivid and quirky about rural Australian life is perfectly captured by Mannix’s brush. From the age of 16 the Nyah-West native has been droving, mustering and shearing his way across the great Australian outback. Unsurprisingly it is these experiences, these sights and these sounds that gave form to his humourous depictions of the people and places featured in his art.
Mannix cites the works of Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson as an inspiration and happily trades in the same larrikinism and dry Aussie humour as his these two giants of Australian literary arts.
“They spent most of their careers immortalising these folks in verse; I bring them alive on canvas, just as these legendary Australian balladeers intended; full of the vitality, the humour and the spirit of our great Country.”
Much like Pro Hart, Mannix is self-taught and has steadily built upon his skills and his style over the years. Although his style has technically advanced over the years, the colour, form, texture and line of a Mannix paintings remain as primitive and perfectly suited to its subjects the day he first started.
The gentle humour, the rich colour, the literal depictions and the unmistakable Aussie outback scenarios have made him a favoured and highly collectable Australian artist, and he will be for years to come.