A self-taught American of Haitian birth, Max Romain combines his Haitian heritage with his subconscious feelings about sex, religion, and the people around him. He often includes elements of voodoo culture in his paintings - “Voodoo is strong in New York,” he declares. “And why not? It’s a free country!”

Max Romain creates his drawings with trancelike concentration. “I don’t know what they are about (the drawings), I just take the pencil and work,” he states. There is a well-documented history of primitive painting in Haiti, but Romain’s art is very different from the traditional Haitian paintings - he combines his own unique outlook with a touch of New York and a touch of island life.

Romain was first exhibited at the Donnell Branch of the New York City Public Library on Fifty-third Street in 1991. He was also featured in and illustrated in the catalog for the exhibition “Made in USA,” Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland (1993), and in the Noyes Museum show, “Twentieth Century Self-Taught Artists from the Mid-Atlantic Region,” Oceanville, New Jersey (1994). The artist’s work was frequently exhibited at outsider/folk art events, such as the annual Outsider Art Fair in New York.