Marian Maguire (born 1962) is a
lithographer from
New Zealand. She is known for juxtaposing landscapes, historical characters, and mythical figures from New Zealand and from ancient Greece, mixing the realism of 19th-century colonial prints with the more stylized designs of Greek
black-figure pottery and
Māori wood carvings.[1][2][3]
Maguire's early printmaking work included figures, architectural elements, and (by the late 1990s) ancient Greek culture.[5]
The prints of her work on New Zealand and ancient Greece are organized into series, including:
Southern Myths (2001), which transported
Achilles and
Ajax into the New Zealand landscape.[1]
The Odyssey of Captain Cook (2003–2005), which combined 19th-century historical figures such as
Captain Cook and the Māori chief
Natai with Greek imagery.[1][5]
The Labors of Herakles (2006–2008), in which
Hercules takes part in New Zealand events such as the signing of the
Treaty of Waitangi.[1][3][5]
In 2015 she shifted media with her series Feats, Pursuits & Endless Toil of seven painted door panels and four etchings, continuing the mixture of Greek and New Zealand themes. The works in this series were partly inspired by Maguire's experiences living through the
2011 Christchurch earthquake.[6]
^
abHawes, Greta (2015), "The Unsettled Settler: Herakles the Colonist and the Labours of Marian Maguire", Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 23 (2): 11–28,
doi:
10.2307/arion.23.2.0011,
S2CID163506330