Never comfortable in the various roles he has assumed during his life, Max King Cap, now at ease, makes art about role-playing. A former firefighter, military school cadet, advertising copywriter, ward of the state, and seminarian, he was born in the geographical center of the United States, Castle Rock SD, on the day President Kennedy died. In his art he has often mused upon the roles he might play, as an actor might consider a character. His loves of propaganda art and the plays of Shakespeare have led him to create the series of works, Dictators and Bardsmen.

Educated at the University of Chicago, Max has traveled extensively, meeting his future wife in Berlin during the year that the wall was taken down. It is the background, though, of historical events that interests him, the bit players, the cast of thousands and their private dreams. He recalls as a small child playing at the Black Panther headquarters in Chicago, attending lectures on urban warfare and the effects of nerve gas on the human body. Most vividly he remembers the newspaper illustrations by Black Panther Minister of Culture, Emory Douglas; moved by their aggressive immediacy he decided to become an artist. He recalls the history of his family’s trek to the far corners of the country, of a cowboy in Wyoming, a Negro League ball player in Kansas City, an FBI informant in Oakland, a longshoremen in New York, a draft dodger in Quebec, and a mercenary in Angola. The individual stories of these characters are a fascination to him, not just of his family but of all the families, all the bit players in the grander schemes that envelop us.

HE is enamored with velvet Elvis paintings and the works of Hans Holbein the Elder, as well as the work of British painter Patrick Caulfield.

Max King Cap lives in Los Angeles. He met Fausto Herrera-Dominguez during the College Art Association conference in Philadelphia in 2002.