John Wood Beckwith Maxwell was born in Fredericton (1934) where the fledgling UNB Art Centre loomed influentially in his introduction to art as a child and later creative development.

Lucy Jarvis, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, Fritz Brandtner and Madge Smith were among his early teachers and mentors. He also absorbed the presence and impact of Goodridge Roberts in his formative years and later that of Molly Lamb Bobak. He studied literature at the University of New Brunswick . A Canada Council grant in 1959 funded a trip to Paris, where he studied at the Academie Julienne and at La Grande Chaumière. He would then return to Fredericton.

Maxwell is said to have emphasized that being in or out of current fashion was irrelevant to his painterly concerns. What mattered to him, ultimately, was to make art that resonated with “truth” and thus have lasting value.