For those who call the continent of Australia home, the regeneration of native flora in the wake of bushfire is always a welcome sight, and never more so than following the devastating bushfire season of 2019-20. The process plays out as a triumph of colour over monochrome. First comes a lime-green fuzz, smudging the blackened trunks and branches of recently scorched trees. Then the frothy clouds expand to form a garment of chartreuse leaves, radiant and flickering in the light.

Observing the regrowth during regular trips to regional town Orange to visit family, Sydney-based artist Tim Maguire stopped in the Blue Mountains village of Bell one day to take photographs of the delicate swathes of colour as they grew to obscure the skeletons from which they sprang. “I had been thinking about making a couple of paintings based on the aftermath of bushfire for some time, and this particular expanse of bushland caught my eye,” says Maguire.