Guido Maestri - 'Portals'

Jan Murphy Gallery is pleased to present 'Portals', a new exhibition by Guido Maestri. After a long stint living in the city, he recently returned to Pittwater where he spent most of his formative years. The landscape has always held his fascination, and this is the place where it all started, with the Ku-ring-gai National Park as his backyard. This exhibition is a celebration of that return: to the bushland tracks he once wandered as a teen, the light-splitting through dense eucalypts, and the hush and noise of nature. The paintings in 'Portals' are not direct depictions of the landscape, but rather explorations of the thresholds between familiarity, memory and rediscovery. Maestri's paintings convey a deep reverence for untouched pockets of nature, reflecting the transformative experience of returning to the places that shaped us—and seeing them anew. Guido Maestri won the Archibald Prize in 2009 and is a nine-time finalist in the Wynne Prize (2012-2017, 2020-2021, 2023). His work is held in several public collections, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Portrait Gallery, the Art Gallery of South Australia, Artbank and Parliament House collections. In 2021 Maestri was honoured with a major solo exhibition titled 'Stories from Homedale' at the newly opened Mudgee Arts Precinct, NSW.