Seeking inspiration creates a net effect

The Daily Telegraph Sept 30 2009

Elizabeth Fortescue and the Daily Telegraph

JUST before he won the Archibald Prize earlier this year, Sydney artist Guy Maestri felt impatient and dissatisfied with his work.
 "I'd run out of steam,'' he says.
 For him, an exhibition in Hong Kong of his popular, semi-abstract landscapes seemed to signal the end of that body of work. But he was 
in a quandary about his next move.
 Winning the Archibald with his portrait of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, however, proved to be a confidence booster which set Maestri's work off on a whole new tangent.
 In fact, his style of painting has taken such a radical turn that he believes "people are going to be very confused when they get the invitation'' to his forthcoming exhibition at Tim Olsen Gallery.
 Until now, Maestri's landscapes have been gestural, colourful, semi-abstract and kinetic. That has all gone in his new body of work, which has a far more contemporary aesthetic. The paintings are big and dark, and they draw on imagery that Maestri has sourced from the web. Hence the show's title, Google Earth.
 What links the new work with the old is the subject matter. Through his new paintings, Maestri continues to think out loud about nature and man's vexed habitation of it.
 "They [the new paintings] are all just ideas,'' Maestri says. ``It's odd to have these ideas and, because of what I do, I have to present them as finished paintings. But really they're just pages 
of a sketchbook. ''
The standout work is a large painting in oil on linen which depicts a fully submerged polar bear, its coat fanning out in the water as it swims along. It is not only a strikingly beautiful image, but a comment on the future of the global environment.
 Another painting, titled Brave New World, depicts a spaceman about to be engulfed by a breaking wave. It is Maestri's metaphor for a future in which humans might live ``off world'', as in the 1982 Ridley Scott film Blade Runner.
 Despite these gloomy themes, Maestri admits to having had fun. 
``It's been really nice to be in the studio, with renewed enthusiasm,'' he says.
 ``It [the Archibald Prize] is a big push, but all of a sudden you think `now I'm a serious artist, I've got to produce some serious work as well'. So it's good and bad. There's a bit more pressure and anxiety attached. But it was a catalyst to propel me in this new direction.
 "So this is definitely unfamiliar territory, which I like to be in. I think I was getting too comfortable where I was. I'm very scared about this work -- how it's going to be received. But you have to do what you do, basically.''

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