Guido (Guy) Maestri Wombarra

During the COVID lockdowns, Guido Maestri’s painting practice took an unusual turn. Unable to travel and paint en plein air, Maestri started making landscape dioramas to work from instead. This idea was inspired by the miniature world he shares with his five-year-old son, August.

‘Everything August plays with is a tiny version of something life-sized – a vehicle, a rainbow, a mountain. This is how we gain our initial understanding of the world, on a mini and tangible scale,’ Maestri says.

Although Wombarra is based on an area of coastal rainforest north of Wollongong, on Dharawal Country, Maestri delights in the elements of strangeness that emerge in his painted translations of toy-sized models.

‘When painting from these dioramic gardens there is still a kind of naturalistic space or depth to work from. There is also an artificiality that gives the painting an otherworldly feel.

‘The building of a landscape fascinates me. You are the creator or gardener. It’s not fixed – you can manipulate the ‘stage’ before you start, or as you go. The painting becomes an idea or a memory, twice removed. And after a while, you disregard the reference, and the painting develops its own life and place,’ says Maestri, a nine-time Wynne finalist, who won the 2009 Archibald Prize.