Guy Maestri
Great Divide

Landscape painting is a tradition for Australian artists. For me the obligation imposed by that tradition is to observe and report and in doing so I aim to understand this sometimes foreign landscape for European eyes.  I intend always to be an objective observer.

In the landscape that I observe; one of struggle against introduced species (including ourselves) new balances are set up, and the resulting conflicts seek to keep those balances in check. The European out here fights to combat the impact of his environmental mistakes; there is a brutality in that fight for balance, a brutality which I cannot ignore.

My friend, a gentle and thoughtful sheep farmer, survives on the land, by shooting feral dogs that eat his lambs even as they are being born:

 "…..it breaks your heart when you see your lambs mauled by feral dogs and then die in the cruelest way……you shoot these dogs but you never underestimate the sense of injustice in killing something that has evolved to hunt, kill and survive so efficiently."

I cannot ignore my friend’s struggle; the conflict between this man and the environment in that Outback.  It is a conflict I see echoed so often across this land.

That is the landscape that I want to understand, one of unfathomably nuanced conflicts.

         Guy Maestri 2015

In the landscape that I observe; one of struggle against introduced species (including ourselves) new balances are set up, and the resulting conflicts seek to keep those balances in check. The European out here fights to combat the impact of his environmental mistakes; there is a brutality in that fight for balance, a brutality which I cannot ignore.

My friend, a gentle and thoughtful sheep farmer, survives on the land, by shooting feral dogs that eat his lambs even as they are being born:

?..it breaks your heart when you see your lambs mauled by feral dogs and then die in the cruelest way??you shoot these dogs but you never underestimate the sense of injustice in killing something that has evolved to hunt, kill and survive so efficiently."

I cannot ignore my friend?s struggle; the conflict between this man and the environment in that Outback.  It is a conflict I see echoed so often across this land.

That is the landscape that I want to understand, one of unfathomably nuanced conflicts.