Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
Private collection, Sydney

In Tim Maguire's work 'The scale borders on the cinematic: the image is treated like a photographic close-up, cropped and focused on a particular detail from a colour-plate reproduction'1. Though from a distance these monumental photorealist works appear flawless, as if produced through a mechanical process, up close the splashes of paint and imperfections are evident. As a printmaker and painter, these processes and mark making are of key importance to Maguire: 'I want every intervention of paint on canvas to be visible at the end...it is as much about the paint as the subject matter'.2

Maguire applies the processes of print making to his painting. Working from photographs, he creates tone and depth with the three colours used in the printing process: cyan, magenta and yellow. Opaque paint is applied in thin layers allowing the white of the canvas to come through, the splashing and removing of paint with solvent enhances the colour, and the liquid glaze gives the translucent skin of berries or buds the appearance of being blanketed with morning dew. He describes the process as "mechanical in origin but organic in application... I paint big pictures to bring the viewer forward; the closer you get the more abstract it becomes, until it looks like it's falling apart. But move back, and the image begins to reconstruct itself."3

Francesca Cavazzini

1. Wayne Tunnicliffe (ed.), Contemporary: Art Gallery of New South Wales Contemporary Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2006, p. 180
2. Maria Stoljar interviewing Tim Maguire, Talking with Painters: Tim Maguire podcast, June 2020
3. Louise Bellamy, "Tim Maguire", The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 November 2005

Tim Maguire is represented by Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne