In 1972 you moved to New York following extensive travel through Europe and the US, why did New York capture your imagination as an artist ?

I moved to New York in 1972 after a long relationship with the city. From 1968 onwards I used to travel yearly on the Greyhound bus from Bloomington, Indiana to visit the city. Then in 1972 the economics fell into place when my wife got a professorship at Columbia University.

I had always had my sights on New York City because it was the crossroads of Modernism. The museums were full of paintings I most admired. What's more, many of the artists I wanted to be involved with were here.

When we moved to the city in ’72 I was adamant it was to hangout with artists, not the dealers and curators. Within the first two years I was given the marvelous loft I still live in and was invited to join an artist critique group.

We would visit someone’s studio every two or three weeks and discuss art work for hours. In these years Barbara and I would also hang out in bars on a Saturday night with our artist peers and then go back to someone’s loft, compose exquisite corpse poetry and listen to music until dawn. It was a fantastic learning time for us.

Around the same time John Walker, the English painter and a close friend of mine, said to Betty Cuningham (the art dealer): “Visit Max, he’s doing something about colour and Matisse.” Betty came to my studio and invited me to join the Cuningham Ward Gallery, which was where I had my first New York exhibition in 1976. We sold all the work and it was a tremendous success. Betty Cuningham remains a dear friend to this day.

How has this changed over time, does the city still inspire your practice?

I've come to understand and know New York through the people who exist here. I live in my ‘hood. I shuffle around the neighbourhood in my Chinese slippers. I go to the gym. I eat in the most incredible restaurants.

My assistants now teach me about where to see the most interesting painting, because the art world changes so rapidly. Friends visit from all over the globe. Great poets come and collaborate with me on books.

I continue to visit the art supply store up the road because it has the finest collection of materials I’ve ever encountered. Their paper department is inspirational.

This reminds me of one of my favourite stories about Picasso. He visited an art store near his chateau, walked around for a time, approached the owner and said “send it over”. He had the store delivered.

You are considered one of New Zealand’s most prominent international artists. How would you describe your connection to New Zealand now after so many years abroad?

New York City, like New Zealand, is an island. It’s simply a narrow strip of land between two rivers. You can get on the Circle Line Ferry and sail around Manhattan, which is an extraordinary experience and reminds me of sitting in a dingy 20 feet off shore in the Bay of Islands when I was a kid, imagining holding New Zealand in the palm of my hand like a clam shell. I think islands are unique in that one can curate the wholeness of the place because it has defined boundaries.

I think of myself as a New Zealander, but I am also an American, I am Asian, a husband, artist, friend, a Zen Buddhist. But each individual label doesn’t do the job of defining me. I’m suspicious of the word "expatriate" because I’m not ex anything New Zealand.

I believe I am strongest in the landscape of my childhood. It is in this place “the boy dreams of becoming a man and the man dreams of being a boy”. I’ve never replaced my New Zealand nature imagery despite looking at nature wherever I am.

Listening to a New Zealander talk is still one of my deepest pleasures in life. Wystan Curnow (New Zealand writer and curator) and I break into dialect and speak in a language few from other English speaking countries can follow when we’re together. New Zealand is an exquisite jewel deep in my heart.

You reputedly formed a very close relationship to another of New Zealand’s preeminent artists, Len Lye. Can you elaborate how this relationship influenced your practice?

Len influenced me greatly. I met him in 1974. He was very warm and took me under his wing and made me his star pupil. In Len Lye I had a mentor. He introduced me to his world of movement, color, light, intensity, concentration, kinetics, film, poetics, rave-ups, outrageous bumblebee clothing and crazy hats.

He used to phone me up and say “are you working?”. If I were to say “yes” he would say, “great, then I don’t have to.”

Often there would be a shout below my open window and Len would be standing there ready for coffee and cake. He told me many stories about his life in England, including his friendships with Ben Nickelson, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and his life living on a barge on the Thames.

Len was uncompromised, a real artist, the market didn’t come into it with him. Towards the end of his life we Kiwis pulled together around him, we were totally devoted to him. After his death we ensured his entire artistic life went home to New Plymouth, where the Len Lye Foundation at the Govett Brewster Gallery now cares for it.

You have stated that you are particularly interested in exploring a “Pacific Rim ideology” in your work. Can you elaborate on what this means to you?

It is the way I understand the Pacific, which at this time seems to place New Zealand in a position of honour and great opportunity. Look at NZedge.com, the website of the New Zealand Diaspora - we are living in the very centre.

You’ve produced artist books in the past with other artists, what do you enjoy about the nature of collaboration?

Consider the quote from John 1:14, “In the beginning was the word [...] and it became flesh and dwelt amongst us.” Growing up in Epsom, Newmarket, and Grafton, I quickly understood the power of the word when my mother, bless her heart, let me draw in the books I was reading. She purchased suitcases full of secondhand books. I still have my original copy of Winnie the Pooh, which contains my illustrations.

I understood from the beginning that as an artist I was not alone. I have been fortunate to work with artists such as John Yau, Lewis Hyde, Robert Creeley, and Alan Loney, who have all been generous with their time and talents.

For example, Lewis Hyde and I met at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio in a residency on Lake Como Italy in 1990. Our apartments were adjoining. We began working together immediately illustrating Rinzai Zen’s text Ten Oxherding Pictures. We completed it last year and will exhibit the drawings t Japan Society Gallery here in Manhattan next year.

What work will you be showing in the current Guggenheim show?

My painting Lion (1985), from my Classical Quatrefoil period, will be shown in the exhibition "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989", curated by the Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim Museum, Alexandra Munroe.

This show is a germinal exhibition. I believe there is a visual shift occurring in America from Atlantic culture to Pacific culture. Naturally the most appropriate point to start investigating this cultural shift is to reference the history. That is what this exhibition is attempting to do. For me, it is simply an honor to have a work hung next to art by luminaries such as Brice Marden and Robert Motherwell.

I believe this moment in the art world is crucial, as it was at the turn of the 20th century. Think of the artistic explosion that occurred around the School of Paris in the early 20th century (for example Picasso and Braque experimenting with cubist painting, which we now as a defining moment in the development of modernism).

A similar thing is occurring now in New Zealand as well as in America. Our young artists don’t have to run off and live somewhere else in the world. They can simply travel and then return to develop their practice in the country they think of as home.

What other exhibiting plans do you have for 2009?

In the coming months I will exhibit at the Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland, Hamish Morrison Galerie in Berlin, Page Blackie Gallery in Wellington, and Nadene Milne Gallery in Arrowtown.