About the Artist, Max Reif

     Welcome to the REALnothings Store. I feel excited to be able to share with you some of the beautiful images that have come through my paint brush. Only recently has it become possible, due to technological advances in printing and software, for an artist like me to be able to create such high-quality cards and sell them at reasonable prices!  

    As a small child I liked to use perspective to draw Havana-like, royal palm-lined streets full of bistros. I did very little visual art, however, once my 7th grade art teacher flunked me on a still-life project I'd felt very proud of.
      At the University of Cincinnati a decade later, I took a painting course to "try something different." I didn't even know how to behave in an art studio. Trying to look inconspicuous, I got out a tiny brush and began doing a line-painting of the easel directly in front of me. My teacher, Mr. Foster, walked up to me, placed my biggest brush in my hand, and said "Use lots of color and have fun!"

      As you can see on these pages and in the galleries on my website, I did both. Painting initiated me into one of the great adventures of my life. It eventually led me to the New York Art Students' League, to many one-man and group shows, and to being "handled" for a time by the Broadway Gallery of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
      The paintings on the cards are really visual records of intense or sublime experiences, which you, as viewer, may now enter and enjoy. 

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