Guido (Guy) Maestri Black gold no. 5

The world runs on burning coal, and as I flew over the vast open-cut coalmines of the Hunter Valley, I truly understood our appetite for it and got a sense of it on a global scale. I spent time out there painting the machinery that delivers us our power. It has a sense of being archaic, though it is our current technology. Mining has brought us nearly every manmade object on earth, and has had a profound influence on the landscape, so I cannot ignore it as a subject for landscape painting.

- Guy Maestri, 2015