Max Kreijn

Max Kreijn, at 65, is an internationally renowned painter who has exhibited extensively in gallery and museum shows throughout the world. He is regarded as one of Australia and Holland's foremost living realist painters with an international reputation. With his inimitable combination of Vermeer's eye and a surrealist's instinctive understanding he creates for the viewer a chart of the soul of places he has visited that are at once immediate and timeless. Max Kreijn shows us there is a way - if not to stop time - then to record it to hold the perfect moment in his hand with all its sparkling vitality intact.

During the past 35 years he has lived and worked in many countries including Italy, Spain, Portugal, Thailand, Argentina and Australia. He now spends his time between studios in Bangkok and Sydney. He has published the trilogy SLEEPING WITH BOYS (The Altar Boy, 2008, The Passion, 2009 and The Not-quite-frozen Lake Of Tender Hurt, 2010), not only as 3 books but also as one trilogy, and two new novels THE PASSING-ON OF KNOWLEDGE, 2010 (HET DOORGEVEN VAN KENNIS is the Dutch translation of this novel) and THE BOOK OF DANIEL (also available as a Dutch translation).

He is currently working on several big exhibitions for Europe and the Middle East and last year completed a collection of stories, DIVING INTO THE VOID, published in 2011.

THE PAINTER IN THE KITCHEN, the totally re-edited new edition of his cookbook, first published in 2003 in Europe, is now available in paperback worldwide through Amazon.com. There is also a numbered hardcover edition published privately in an edition of 500 signed copies.

More than 150 recipes, accompanied by more than 100 paintings.

The blisters! The cuts! The wisdom! all in full colour...

September 1 2012 saw the publication of his sixth novel, his most personal one:

IT'S CLOSING TIME, where he tries to be not-autobiographical, but still...some memories and the great love of his life, once lost but finally found again; a reflection on a full gay life, partly brought on as he lives through the slow dying-process of a dear friend, the wife of a very dear old friend he used to share a school-bench with, more than 50 years ago. But finally this is an uplifting novel about the realisation of dreams, the mistakes and losses, but finally the closing of the circle of 65 years of a fully lived successful life.