Hill End no.2

Guy Maestri’s work over the past few years has focused strongly on landscape. His paintings and drawings have taken as their subject particular places in rural New South Wales, such as the Southern Highlands and Hill End, or the more remote desert landscapes of Central Australia. His practice is firmly grounded in plein air painting and drawing as well as studio work, and is informed by an ecological sensitivity, as well as a strong feeling for the formal qualities of his various mediums.

"Maestri’s connection to the Australian scene is not literal. He doesn’t pretend to forge an integral or iconic image by connecting with the land. If anything his most successful paintings convey a vague discomfort, a very real sense of not belonging at all and instead simply watching the scene in a state of apprehension, static wonderment and doubt." (Anna Johnson, ‘Everybody knows this is nowhere, recent works in the landscape by Guy Maestri’, Sydney, 2012 <guymaestri.com/words/>).

This lush sugar-lift aquatint was made at the Whaling Road Studio with Diana Davidson and Peter Stevens in response to a group of plein air ink drawings Maestri had recently completed of the Hill End landscape. While Maestri has not made many prints during his career (and this was the first time he had used aquatint), it is a fine work that reflects the painterly fluidity of his Hill End brush and ink drawings with subtlety and nuance.