Local artist Holly McNamee has spent the last eight years labouring over her latest body of work – The Maitland Collection.
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The meticulous renditions of Maitland landmarks are drawn from photographic reference but overflow with the colour of personal memory.
“These are the parts of Maitland I love and grew up with, most of which are still there,” Ms McNamee said.
Each image pays tribute not just the architecture of a building from a particular slice of time, but also the lives and memories welded to the town.
“There is so much attatchment to a place,” Ms McNamee said.
“It’s not just bricks-and-mortar or a wooden fence.
“There’s so much life that’s gone into it.”
Ms McNamee grew up in Maitland in the 1950s and 60s and, while she spent 20 years living in Adelaide, Christmas was always spent in the town she called her “heartland home”.
Her portrayal of Maitland, vivid and warm, is often expressed from the perspective of her younger self.
“It’s from the view of a smaller child,” she said.
“It’s about re-enforcing the height and the wonderful look of the structures.”
A few pieces in the collection of about 60 stand out. Among them Platform One, where the artist would leave for boarding school and the site of her childhood home.
Now a petrol station on High Street, the focal-point of her youth was agonisingly reconstructed from her mother’s photographs and memory.
“A few years after the 55 flood we moved,” she said.
As with most true Maitlanders, Ms McNamee marks the passage of time with historic storms.
“And I moved back [to Maitland] around the time of Pasha Bulka.”
After eight years, the final piece of the puzzle was the Rotunda in Maitland Park.
“The collection is now complete,” she said.
“All the places that needed to be there are there.”
Ms McNamee said the works had a particular resonance with people of her age.
“People enjoy sharing their memories about certain places,” she said.
“They belong to everyone, places hold hundreds of memories.
Despite the connection, she hoped younger people would take this final weekend of exhibition as an opportunity to see a Maitland they might not know.
“These are the corners you wouldn’t know about,” she said.
“The places you can only find by wandering down laneways.”
The Maitland Collection is on display at Brough House this weekend only. It will be open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 3pm. Works will be for sale though Ms McNamee said she hopes they will remain as a collection. For more information call 49344314.
