Guido (Guy) Maestri Grange Burn Bridge

I painted the Grange Burn Bridge while on a two-month residency in Hamilton, south-western Victoria. The Western District is highly productive pastoral country. It is literally the ‘land of the golden fleece’, made famous by Arthur Streeton nearly a hundred years ago. Streeton would have crossed the Grange Burn by steam train as he traversed the region making his iconic paintings, which were seen as ‘postwar Australian landscapes full of national pride, prosperity and potential’. The area is still rich, but a train hasn’t crossed the Grange Burn for 30 years.

- Guy Maestri, 2016