my country childhood
AN INDUSTRIAL TROLLEY sits at the centre of Guy Maestri’s studio. Old tomato tins crowd the surface, crammed with brushes of every shape and size, their handles coated in paint. “This is my mess,” says Guy, 45, “and I’ve got the same set-up in the van, but it all folds up and goes away.”
He’s talking about the mobile studio he takes deep into the bush, to produce the enormous paintings that hang on the walls around us. Although Guy won the 2009 Archibald prize for his portrait of Indigenous singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and is well known for his sculpture, the vast majority of Guy’s work focuses on the Australian landscape.
His affinity with the countryside began in Mudgee, in the NSW Central Tablelands, where
