max Denison-Pender
Before jetting off on his next adventure, the 23-year-old oil painter invites REBECCA BRADBURY into his London studio to talk about painting erupting volcanoes, sparring with Anthony Joshua and following a five-year plan
For 15 days, Max Denison-Pender braved ferocious winds, freezing temperatures and lashings of snow and hail to paint Iceland’s Fargradalsfjall volcano. But the painter did not just have severe weather conditions and a two-hour uphill trek with a full-size easel slung over his shoulder to contend with. Being mid-way through its six-month-long eruption, there was also a steady stream of molten lava and deadly gases to negotiate.
“It was hardcore,” Max says. “You didn’t have to worry about the carbon monoxide, as it seeps in slowly. But the sulphur monoxide blows in with the wind… You could see the smoke clouds changing direction and coming towards you, then it felt like you had pepper in your eyes and your throat stung. The alarms would go off and everybody was like, ‘GET OFF THE MOUNTAIN!’”
Few people can say they’ve risked their life for a painting, but then Max is not your average artist. Born in Santiago, Chili, with stints growing up in Wiltshire and Barcelona, the painter was 13 years old when he became hooked by extreme art, a concept he describes as “getting out into the elements and painting things that are seen as impossible to paint”. At 16, he even pitched the idea as a TV show to Sky Arts. But after being told they didn’t have the budget, the artist – and a team of two video editors, one being his younger brother,
Charlie – are now forging ahead with the footage themselves, aiming to eventually launch it on Max’s own YouTube channel.
The trip to Iceland in 2021 also involved using a drone to drop an artwork into the volcano’s crater to create an NFT. But despite these more unconventional and cutting-edge pursuits, Max is a classically trained artist. At the core of his practice are the traditional techniques he learnt in his late teens when, at 16, he abandoned A Levels in favour of studying at the London Atelier of Representational Art (LARA).
“I can now literally paint whatever I want,” he explains, and his portfolio is proof of this versatility. When not painting volcanoes last year, he was working on another hazardous subject as an official Team GB artist – painting the Olympic boxing hero Anthony Joshua. Up on the ropes as the athlete sparred, Max wasn’t dodging lava this time, but the swings of a heavyweight champion.
“When painting boxing, you’ve got to stay present in the moment and present on your painting,” he says. “It’s very easy as an artist to get lost in your work and forget what’s going on around you. But if you do that, you might get hit… I almost got thumped in the face by AJ because his partner ducked!” The result is a selection of on-the-ground oil sketches, painted with confident and dynamic brush strokes that translate the speed, power, and control of