Originating from a family where theatre, recitation and painting were encouraged, Maksud enjoyed all possible encouragement from the well-to-do home front in Chandpur. As he pressed on at the Institute of Fine Arts, Dhaka University, he had teachers such as Mohammed Kibria, Abul Baset, Mahmudul Haque, and visiting artists such as Monirul Islam and Shahid Kabir from Spain, and Shahabuddin from Paris to encourage him. The young artists of his time, immediately senior to him, like Shishir Bhattacharya egged him on too.

Maksud went to New Delhi, when his wife Shimu won a scholarship to learn classical singing in the Indian capital, and was exposed to the subcontinental contemporary giants like FM Hussain and Subramaniam. He visited the best galleries there, created a good impression on the artists abroad, and arranged for solos and joint exhibits, which got rave reviews in India Today.

He is scheduled to hold another solo in New Delhi shortly, loving the laissez-faire attitude and the broad horizons of the connoisseurs, gallery-goers and patrons there. Although still a young painter, he has won acclaim in his own arena of "Epar Opar Bangla."

Working in his studio at home at Dhanmondi, Maksud has taken to art-related work to press on with the business of existence of late. His main focus, however, is freelance painting to express his imagination and emotions. He works both in oil and watercolour, as they give him different types of sense of satisfaction. He is at home both with the delicate watercolour as much as with the broad strokes from the oil brush. He has also experimented with printmaking.

He has focused on his painting, having abandoned his passion for the theatre and recitation. He has a passion for literature too but felt, as a student, that one must get an academic training for fine arts, whereas writing is something that is God-given, and comes with more exposure to books and discussions on literature, (which he indulges in even today, when he has "addas" with his friends who are all culturally inclined). Recently he served as the gallery coordinator in an exhibition of major Indian and Bangladeshi artists at the Shilpangan.

Cool and confident, Maksud works for hours on end in his studio, piling up innumerable canvases--watercolours and mixed media paintings. True, his friends, who saunter in sometimes, do tend to create a halt in his flow of work. He does pause to read or change the classical music CD discs that form the backdrop of his hours of continuous painting. His entire existence is woven around his painting, nuclear family, and friends. He is well aware of the art of winning patrons, but is content to maintain a low profile.