The most important thing when you paint a portrait is that your sitter connects to it and is moved by it and transported and identifies with it in some way at the end.
I'm Maggie Beer. I am fortunate to be a Barossa person and what do I identify with? Everything about food and music and art and life and joy, finding joy even through the hard times.
Hi, my name is Del Catherine Barton. I'm an artist. And my practice spans a number of different mediums, but painting is my primary practice.
And yes, I just feel very moved to be here in this moment with beautiful Maggie. The way that I approach portraiture, because for me it's an in road, I feel like it's a richer level of engagement for the sitter and then hopefully a richer level of engagement for audiences too is to sort of ask my sitter to identify a series of objects essentially or colours as well. And so that was part of our conversation as well and Maggie gave me a very long list. There were way too many friends to choose from.
And it really is so important and there's a lot of symbolism for me in it as well. Like the pomegranate. You know, the pomegranate I've used as the symbol for my foundation because the ails in the pomegranate, the little tiny ruby eras, seeds of change. And also, you know, I'm a country girl. I grew up with my mom in the veg garden. So for me, Maggie's paradigms around connection to land and the celebration of seasonal produce and the fact that she has, you know, some very specific food loves, you know, there's just so much to celebrate there.
And on top of that, one thing I didn't know about Maggie's career, which I found out in the context of sitting with her in the studio, is that her career, and I'd much prefer Maggie to speak about this with more specific. but really started with the pheasant. Yes. I mean, the luck of my life was meeting Colin. And we married 16 weeks after we met 53 years ago, so, you know, risk-takers. He has supported every single thing I have ever done. Without him, I would not have achieved nearly, nearly what I have.
But it was the pheasant that was the catalyst for something that was right in front of me. Because I'd left school at 14, because my parents lost their business and bankrupt, I didn't have an education, and so I was always searching for what I wanted to do, yet I'd always cooked, as my family always cooked. And so it was in me, it's instinct. And so with the pheasants, people didn't know what to do with them, because there were no cookery books with pheasants except for European ones. And I never thought of not cooking. I just cooked automatically. And so from the farm shop to the restaurant to everything else.
But really, Colin has made everything possible. Well, now I can see why the pheasant is... It's so important. Because the pheasant in the painting, I approached very much like the idea of an animal familiar. So it's Colin the pheasant looking adoringly at Maggie. I mean, a quality of joy is such an ineffable thing, I suppose. Because again, the challenges of a pictorial space too is that it's a distilled space. It's not a moving space. It's a realized surface, a fixed surface. But with Maggie, who has so much kinetic energy. Again, the level of detail and the very decorative areas with the dotting and, you know, the way that, yeah, even the peas with their tendrils, I really wanted all of that life force energy and that kinetic energy. Again, it was a very central composition and I, as I said before, I wanted that that regal quality, because I do, I revere this woman, but I wanted the whole picture to be pulsating with energy and possibility and beauty. Yeah, the end.
I don't like smiles in portraiture, to capture something far more innate. And Maggie does exude that. And I feel like it's very easy for people to romanticise also the life of an artist or the life of a chef. I mean, I know you wear a lot of... Oh, I'm not a chef. No, I'm a chef. No, you're a cook. A cook. So I love that. I love that. I'm a cook. I'm a cook. Yes.
