The Depth of the Tragedy

If couches could talk, the one on which I spoke with artist Max Gleason would tell an emotional story full of many of the themes now present in his art. It has made the cross-country trek a handful of times, back and forth from New York to California, as Gleason traded one coast for the other — and then, again — earlier in life.

Now firmly planted in Santa Ynez, Gleason creates from his studio, a repurposed barn located among the vines of his family’s Roblar Winery and Vineyards, also the site of his Art Medicine workshops, the second series of which begins July 7.

“There’s a healing power to art, and these workshops allow me to connect with other artists as creators,” Gleason said, as we sat together on the aforementioned sofa in his vineyard studio.

Healing through art is a subject about which Gleason can speak volumes.

During one of his previous California residencies, Gleason would make a fateful return to New York, where he bumped into Vanessa Goss Bley, a singer, composer, producer, and musician whom he first met years before. The reacquainting would ultimately alter Gleason’s artistic purpose.

After kindling a hard-to-maintain bicoastal relationship with Bley, Gleason moved back to New York in 2012, living and painting in Brooklyn. The couple married in 2013. In 2015, they relocated to Los Angeles, then to Solvang a year later, where they had two children: their daughter, Lucienne, followed by a son, Desmond.

Gleason explained, “Visual art is, to me, a type of language. It’s a form of communication created by humans, for humans. A way for me to connect to you. All art does this, but for me it often feels like the most direct conduit for human-to-human connection, the best way to address the human experience, is by depicting the human figure. As a symbol, it is immediately recognizable and relatable for almost anyone.”

The style of Gleason’s figurative art and his desire to form that human connection would forever morph as of October 2019, when “the crash” occurred. Bley, along with Gleason’s two young children, were killed in a car crash on Santa Barbara County’s Highway 154. The suicidal driver who caused the crash would eventually be convicted of second-degree murder. But Gleason’s life sentence was entirely different.

Gleason put his painting on pause for about two weeks following the crash. Then, he started on a portrait of Bley and the two children.

“There was healing in that … it was a slow, deliberate, almost meditative process. It made the immense loss just a bit more ‘digestible.’”

For the next two years, Gleason would continue to paint his lost family, which would be a large part of the processing. He would post his works on social media, and people began to ask him for commissioned pieces. One was a dream translation, and one was a gift for a friend — a work that would include symbols for life phases, and meaningful changes in that friend’s life. Gleason’s style started to organically shift to the more cosmic, more ethereal, transcendent quality that it now possesses. “I’m creating worlds now; it’s all a lot more symbolic.”

Most of Gleason’s commissioned works were, and still are, for customers who connect with him through some form of their own profound life experiences, both joyous and painful, and honoring their process and their lives has allowed him to work through his grief.

“I use art to connect with people … it offers some sort of catharsis, for me and hopefully for them, too,” Gleason said of the past three years of this type of work, a path which has led to his new Art Medicine workshops.

Although Gleason’s parents originally noticed his talents in drawing and painting, which he started at a very young age, it was one of his high school teachers in Atlanta, Raul Miyar, who would peak Gleason’s interest in art, the associated shows and galleries, and oils.

Gleason has been painting with oils for nearly 30 years, but he admits that the medium still surprises him from time to time.

“When I expect [oils] to do one thing, it may result in an entirely different effect. Sometimes this is maddening, but often it results in a happy accident,” he said. 

Gleason holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), also his father’s alma mater. Post-RISD, Gleason moved to Manhattan, which, he said, “had everything.” He loved the city’s energy, but also its visual organization and structure, such as how the streets were laid out on a grid.

“I’m inspired by so much outside of the ‘art world.’ There’s visual information everywhere — the organization of buildings on a hillside, the way light filters through trees through a window and casts dancing shadows on a wall, artifacts in a natural history museum, or images from the Webb telescope,” he said.

Over the course of eight New York years, Gleason worked in film and television, in art departments, set- and prop-building. He segued to post-production as a video editor, then landed in digital media at Hearst Corporation.

Throughout that time, Gleason continued to paint and kept some form of a studio — in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, then in New York’s Chinatown — with his work appearing in a number of group shows, a solo show in Chelsea, and on the walls of some very posh domiciles.

It was family that originally brought Gleason out to California. His father founded Santa Ynez Valley’s Refugio Ranch Vineyards in 2004, the winery’s first release was in 2008, and Gleason was pulled by the need to help with the family business. He first moved west in 2010 to work harvest in the winery, assist with wine sales, and lay the foundation for the business side of Refugio Ranch, part of this time living and working in a Downtown Los Angeles building populated by other artists, where he was drawn into the gritty creative community that pulsated on the border of the city’s Skid Row.

Gleason held his first Art Medicine workshop series in April. He marveled at how well the group, 10 people with “disparate personalities, artistic backgrounds, and styles,” supported and collaborated with each other through their own healing and self-realizations, and how the process of both came out in such different ways.

Through the five-week workshop, attendees “explore the symbolic nature of the self through the creation of art.” Facilitated and guided by Gleason, and held in his Santa Ynez studio, participants each create one unique piece over the course of the Sunday series. No professional art experience is required to participate, as per Gleason, “only a desire to create, to see, and be seen.”

Each Art Medicine session includes creation time (easels/tables are provided, but participants supply their own canvas or drawing/painting surface, as well as all art materials), followed by a group discussion where participants share their artwork and the themes that they are exploring.

During the first workshop series, Gleason had Jasmine Hanson, a Santa Ynez Valley–based therapeutic yoga teacher, lead meditation sessions. Hanson is also Gleason’s new wife. The couple met in 2021, through an Instagram post of Gleason’s art, and were married in the summer of 2023.

The Art Medicine workshop series uses Gleason’s passion for and background in art, to prompt the healing process for others; a process that has allowed him “to honor the depth of the tragedy.”

The next Art Medicine workshop series begins Sunday, July 7, and is $300 per person, for all five weeks. Attendance is limited; see maxgleason.com/art-medicine for information.