COLE, Untitled, 1982

Max Cole is an American painter best known for gray-toned canvases and drawings that suggest an approach to infinity through the use of parallel repetitive lines, a record of intense focus that contains the artist’s energy as embedded content. Cole describes the process she has worked in for over 50 years, as meditative.  Although easily compared to the work of Agnes Martin, the similarities are superficial: “There is no other way to produce the work except for a depth of engagement requiring the abandonment of self,” Cole has explained, “and this process opens the door to infinity enabling reach outside the physical. For me art must transcend the material.”  Cole was educated in Kansas and Arizona, but Malevich, the Russian “Suprematist,” influenced her work during the late 1950s, and she continues to produce work that reflects on time.

COLLECTIONS

Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Museum of Modern Art

Los Angeles County Museum of Art