Maxwell Kane is a painter based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Working primarily in oil and charcoal, his work explores the tactile quality of paintings, focusing on themes of devotion, shame, prayer, and the tension between the physical and the spiritual. Distorted figures embody his work, often drawing from religious symbolism and late nineteenth-century painters. His current work focuses on the "forced" figure—an exploration of the sublime as a reprimanding force rather than a lifting one, where the flesh is subject to change under the gravity of an aesthetic or spiritual experience.