About me

I’m a therapist, artist, and contemplative working at the intersection of awareness practices, creativity, and care.

Credentials

  • Master of Counselling, Swinburne University, 2025
  • Adv. Dip. Transpersonal Art Therapy, Phoenix Institute, 2015
  • Mindfulness teaching certification, Insight Meditation, 2023
  • 12 months residential meditation training (Thailand, India, Australia)
  • 15 years professional photography practice
  • 4 solo exhibitions
  • 10+ group exhibitions

My Approach

I enjoy function and public utility. The weave between practical and beauty. A stone staircase with slowly rounded edges, curved by generations of feet stepping into a library. This benefit for the public good and effort across time encapsulates my driving force.

The work happens through sustained attention, not sudden transformation. Like stone stairs worn smooth, like meditation practice built over years. Something grows through the continuity of showing up.

Background

My beginnings were with the National Gallery of Victoria as a Young Ambassador, learning to make art accessible to young people.

Then photography — fifteen years helping people tell visual stories through Max Milne Photography, working with clients from Interview Magazine to Qantas and winning awards for portraiture. I learned to notice what lives in the frame and what just outside the frame helps make it work - collaboration and patience.

From 2015 to 2020, I built Studio Brunswick — three photography studios designed for hire. Spaces where others could make their work. During those years, I toured with performance art such The SBSB and VOICE, made short films, taught photography at Holmesglen TAFE.

Throughout, I spent time in Buddhist monasteries — twelve months total across Thailand, India, and Australia. I facilitated meditation groups at Melbourne Buddhist Centre, taught mindfulness, sat in silence. I learned to notice, to be present, to hold space.

Then my attention turned to counselling. I worked as a student counsellor at Doncaster Secondary College and Wellbeing Counsellor at CamCare, completed a Master of Counselling at Swinburne, trained in art therapy and mindfulness teaching.

Now I work at Talk. Art. Therapy., helping people build capacity for awareness — to notice patterns, to hold what’s difficult, to choose what matters.

Want to know more about what I am doing and what I have done?
Projects | What I’m up to now | CV

Awards:

Photography
Co-winner, Faces of Sydney Festival Competition (2017)
Finalist, Head On Portrait Prize (2012)
Winner, BSG National Photographic Prize (2011)

Performance
Greenroom Award – Outstanding Production, Creative Agency for Audience (2012)

Places to find me:

Instagram: @maxmilne
Bluesky: @maxmilne
Youtube: @maxmilne-aus