Allen Maddox’s career spans over three decades he is one of New Zealand’s most well-known abstract expressionists, he has been referred to as New Zealand’s equivalent to Jackson Pollack.

The X or cross motif frequently reoccurs in his work and had been interpreted in a manner of ways.  Allen Maddox died in Hawkes Bay in 2000 and he is remembered as "probably the most thorough and impassioned abstract expressionist artist yet produced in this country."