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Outsider Artist Max Kuhn Translates America’s Drifter Journey Into Powerful Saga
It is only circumstantial that artist Max Kuhn launches his new show at Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, Texas this month during the 80th Anniversary of “This Land Is Your Land.” The American spiritual by Woody Guthrie was written-over a melody grabbed from a Carter Family song “Rock Of Ages.”
Like Woody Guthrie, Max Kuhn drifts outside of the artistic academy, culling his subjects from the thousands of miles of American highways. Kuhn is an “outsider” artist and his symbols, tropes, memes, archetypes are borrowed from the American catalog of blues, cowboys, rowdys, ramblers, drifters, motel rooms, and lonesome highway blues.
It doesn’t make a difference if you’re male or female, singer or bronc buster, truck driver or fruit picker or cattle sticker. Max Kuhn’s land was carved, painted and collaged for you and me.
“We met Max a few years ago when he sent us this amazing book he had put together,” says gallerist Julie Webb. “His Father was a traveling muralist and Max caught the traveling bug years back and home tends to be where he is at the moment.”
