Max Ferguson (painter)

Max Ferguson (born 1959, New York City) is an American artist best known for his realistic paintings of vanishing urban scenes in and around New York City.

Ferguson learned the discipline for his meticulously rendered oil paintings while doing hand-drawn animated films as a teenager, graduating from N.Y.U. film school in 1980. But it was while spending a year at an art school in Amsterdam (Gerrit Rietveld Academie) when he was 19, that his interest switched from film to painting. He was, and continues to be, greatly influenced by Dutch 17th century painting. "My ideal artistic marriage would be Vermeer and Hopper," says Ferguson. While in Amsterdam, after only painting a few months, the City of Amsterdam purchased one of his paintings. Back in New York a short time later, H. W. Janson, author of the classic text, History of Art, also acquired one of his paintings.

He has worked on a number of series over the years, including the Subways, Coney Island, nocturnal imagery, paintings of his father and Jewish scenes.^[1] While he has concentrated on painting scenes of a rapidly disappearing New York for most of his career, he has recently been expanding his imagery to include Florida, Ireland, and Israel. "My work is essentially autobiographical," says Ferguson, with his two most frequent models being his father and himself.

Ferguson's works are in many prominent private^[2] and public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The British Museum, The Museum of the City of New York,^[3], the Albertina in Vienna and the Seven Bridges Foundation.

Works

• Time 2006 – Oil on panel, 36 by 36 inches (91 × 91 cm)
• My Father in Katz’s 2005 – Oil on panel, 16 by 20 inches (41 × 51 cm)
• Shoe Repair Shop 2008 – Oil on panel, 36 by 36 inches (91 × 91 cm)
• Strand Book Store 2010 – Oil on panel, 16 by 22 inches (41 × 56 cm)

Footnotes

1. ^ Past Exhibition at the Yeshiva University Museum http://www.cjh.org/programs/exhibitionarchive.php?action=show&id=2
2. ^ In the Private Collection of Stewart Lane and Bonnie Comley http://www.nysun.com/real-estate/theater-producers-change-their-stage-when-twins/79855/
3. ^ Museum of the City of New York http://www.mcny.org/museum-collections/painting-new-york/pttcat114.htm

Sources

• Jan Seidler Ramirez, Michele Helene Bogart, and William R. Taylor (2000, 1982). Painting the town: cityscapes of New York : paintings from the Museum of the City of New York. Museum of the City of New York in association with Yale University Press. pp. 302–303. 

External links

• maxferguson.com – Official website
  • Image of Max Ferguson
• Max Ferguson – page on artnet
• Professional Artist Magazine article about Max Ferguson - published September 2011
• New York University Alumni Magazine article about Max Ferguson - published Spring 2011
• ARTnews article about Max Ferguson - published February 2011
• Huffington Post article about Max Ferguson - published November 12, 2010
• New York Daily News article about Max Ferguson - published November 8, 2010
• Art & Antiques: Collector's Sourcebook article about Max Ferguson - published December 2007
• The Robb Report article about Max Ferguson - published December 2002
• ARTnews article about Max Ferguson - published April 1998

Please note

There is no connection between Max Ferguson, the American painter, and the Canadian broadcaster or the Australian photographer, also named Max Ferguson.

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Name	Ferguson, Max
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Date of birth	1959
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