What led you down the artist path? 

I’ve always drawn and painted ever since I could pick up a crayon. It’s never really got out of my system. When I was a kid, I used to get up and draw at night if I couldn’t sleep. More recently I’ve developed a style that’s a lot of fun to paint, so that certainly helped me go down this path. I like the physicality and the tangibility of painting, and the fact that there really are no rules. I love the freedom with painting – anyone can do it. 

What compelled you to return to the Minnamurra River? 

I tend to get obsessed with places, and that area around Minnamurra River and Jamberoo is a bit of a landscape muse for me. I love the cosiness and the immersive nature of the canopies and odd-angled trees along the river. 

In particular, I wanted to look at the river following a sequence of floods that came through recently. They had arrived one after the other, increasing in intensity given the water didn’t have time to subside or sink into the soil. The effects were brutal. The flood didn’t care if it was picking up rocks, large trees, fences, parts of bridges, cars, anything. They were all picked up and thrown around. Afterwards there was an eerie sense of stillness. Quiet, gurgling rivers, glassy mirrors in the water, yet above this were bits of landscape, torn off and twisted and shifted around with the force of the water.

Then in the middle of that all that destruction, new life was bursting forth.

With your works, do you paint from life, from photos or from memories?

Usually from life or photos. With my smaller landscape pieces its easier to go into the paddock or sit on the riverside, so they’re mostly from life. With the larger pieces, I need to get the shapes right, then lock in the light, so photos help a lot, and it helps capture a moment. I almost never go from memories. When you see a scene you want to paint, and I think you need to pay attention to that instinct. There must be something about the composition and the ‘storytelling’ that you like, and you need to trust that.

Do you construct a scene/ vignette in your studio, or do you prefer incidental scenes that you come across? 

I always go with real incidental scenes. My stuff works better when it’s a real scene.

What particular techniques do you employ in your practice? Can you paint a verbal picture of your process. Do you use an easel? How long is each session? Do you prefer the light at particular times of day?

I use a dipping pen and ink. Usually I use a C5 speedball nib or a glass blown ink pen, and at the moment it’s often ultramarine blue acrylic ink. 

The key technique is speed – the painting movements are fast, but require a lot of stepping back and then ‘fixing’. I usually like to start with big sections to make sure that I’m getting them correct (so the more significant trees or bends in the river are accounted for) and then I start working fairly rapidly through the painting. Often I start from top left, maybe just a hangover from my old drawing days, being right handed. The dipping pen movements are usually pretty fast. This frees up the style and ensures the texture can build up at a reasonable rate. I use an easel but sometimes I need to rest it flat on a table as well given the size of the canvases. 

I can go for about two hours before I need a break – the canvases are large and I’m constantly re-dipping the pen. I don’t really mind what time of day it is, although if I’m painting outside it’s usually best if I’m in the shade given the ink can react poorly to direct heat before its dry. Late afternoon is usually quite pleasant.

Its takes a while to do these pieces – but I really don’t care. It’s not laborious or ‘time consuming’ – its fun, challenging, and deeply gratifying. I don’t use painting to meditate, but I guess it is meditative – the whole time I’m thinking only about the piece, calculating, shifting, reprioritising. I don’t think about anything else. Music helps too – certain bands or types of music get me through different parts and help me with some of the problem solving. Many thanks go to the Stone Roses, Dinosaur Jr, Neil Young and War on Drugs. 

How does this series build on your previous work and/or point to a new direction for your work? 

I think this is the first time I’ve looked at beauty following destruction; normally its just a spot I like the look of. I often do landscape series as a survey or point in time – it fascinates me how much a landscape can change, so I like to mark that time with a bunch of scenes taken from one spot. I try to represent as much as I see from the one area, and end up naming them in fairly straightforward or almost clinical ways. 

Could you tell us about some of your favourite works from the series 

“Fourth angle” is a spot where we’ve spent a lot of time over the years, exploring with the kids, swimming (its a deep part of that stretch of river), collecting rocks, seeing wallabies, fish, eels, monitor lizards and lots of different kinds of birds. I like how the different trees on opposite sides reach over each other, and the oddness of their angles. 

“Fifth angle’ is a fascinating spot that was totally ‘rezoned’ by the flood. Its a part of the river that often gets new waterholes, new banks, new rivulets, new islands after each flood. It can look completely different year on year. In this case there was a large tree uprooted from upriver, which landed in a clearing. I don’t often paint fallen trees in that ‘flat’ way across the canvas but this tree really made sense for some reason. What amazed me was that a couple of months after the floods, the upturned stump (that you can see on the right) had five different kinds of tree growing out of it. So amidst all this destruction and turmoil, life wanted to go on. Nature was almost tripping over itself to flourish and be reborn. 

Can you describe the importance of the title for this show? 

I named the show before starting any of the pieces, not really knowing what I was in for. The title “After the Flood” was initially marking a point in time, a literal observation of what happened post flood. What I didn’t realise, however, was that the title started to mean something more. In the end, instead of just documenting what things look like, I realised that I was painting destruction combined with regrowth, death with flourishing life. In each piece there is the history and the future of the landscape. Branches and reeds twisted and frozen in time, swept along a high floodline that has since receded. This is a special area for my family so it’s sometimes upsetting to see what the floods have done, but also comforting when things grow back.

What artists are evergreen sources of inspiration for you?  

This is a hard one. Partially because I get so much inspiration (and luckily friendship and advice) from contemporary artists. Partially because its hard to put a cap on sources of inspiration. 

If we’re talking evergreen sources, I’ve always loved the work of Jacques-Louis David, Gericault, Caravaggio, Goya and Dali. Alongside Monet I find the work of Morisot so stunning – her paintings are an excellent lesson in composition and storytelling. Closer to home over the years I’ve loved the work of Brett Whitely (also a fan of ultramarine blue) and Mike Parr. The intensity of Parr’s self portraits is spellbinding.  

These structures matter in the most practical sense: they give the painting a load-bearing point. A telegraph pole becomes a vertical anchor for the composition; a fence line offers direction; a curve of road holds the scene together long enough for him to pull it apart again. They are the scaffolding that allows the surface to behave the way he needs it to.

The artist’s method is deeply physical. “I use anything — a scourer, a piece of card, a chisel,” he says. Brushes have largely disappeared from his practice. His preferred tool is a sponge, which he presses into the paint and drags in long, shearing movements that leave ridges, ruts, and sudden clearings. Working on board gives him licence to scrape back without hesitation, taking out whole passages in the knowledge that the surface won’t give way.

This surface — unruly and layered— is what some have called his “punk impasto.” King deflects the label, but he understands the impulse behind it. “It can be messy,” he says. “But you get these moments of magic unexpectedly.”

Those “moments” are what he has learned to protect. Paul Ryan, his neighbour-turned-mentor, once told him, “When the moment of magic happens, you’ll know it — and leave it alone.” King repeats the line like a rule of life. The discipline is not to improve but to stop. If a gesture lands cleanly — a scraped horizon, a shock of bright ochre, a single pass of the sponge that resolves a hillside — he recognises it instantly and refuses to touch it again.

This instinctive alertness comes, in part, from music. Before he painted, King trained as a classical guitarist, then an opera singer. The intensity and exposure of performing still visibly inhabit him. “On stage you must overcome fear and sing without hesitation,” he says. “When you let go, everything works.” That state — the moment when instinct overrides technique — is what he chases in painting.

King’s relationship to landscape is also shaped by a lifetime of looking, travelling, comparing. He photographs constantly. Back in the studio, he zooms in on each image, scanning for the thing that “catches” — not beauty, but some stray structural or emotional charge that suggests a painting might be possible. “You’re not 100% sure until you start,” he says. And once he starts, the photograph is discarded. The painting becomes an argument with the surface, not a record of the view.

His influences run deep: his late father, -and celebrated Irish artist – Cecil King’s sculptural studio, the smell of clay and cold-cast bronze; Celtic forms; horses; Dublin’s Bull Wall and the enormous Virgin Mary statue his father made for the port. These early experiences taught him that art is a long haul — a discipline, not a mood. They also taught him to understand his materials intimately: how they behave, how they resist, how they can be pushed until they break and still hold together.

This new body of work reflects all of that: the music, the mentorship, and the sculptural inheritance. The landscapes feel more open than before — a shift in temperature, a softening at the edges that King recognises as Ireland resurfacing in him. He’s learned to use strong colour more sparingly, letting quieter passages carry the emotional weight.

When he speaks about his practice, King doesn’t describe a direction so much as a willingness. “I don’t fear the canvas,” he says. “Mistakes aren’t mistakes — they’re another bend in the road.”

It’s an apt description of the work itself: landscapes that bend and swerve, dismantle themselves, start over, and emerge stronger.

In the end, what King is painting is less the landscape in front of him than the force he brings to meet it. The terrain changes — Illawarra, Orford, Ireland — but the energy is constant. The surface stays alive. And in that agitation, that insistence on keeping the paint moving until it reveals something true, the work finds its centre.

Nicola was born 100 miles north-west of Oxford in Staffordshire and grew up in the West Midlands with her parents and younger sister. She describes her childhood as “pretty normal and uneventful” until the family moved to Hong Kong for three years when she was six years old because her father, a civil engineer, was offered a job there.

“Compared to home, Hong Kong was so different and fun,” Nicola recalls. “We could walk to the beach, catch ferries to places and the city was exciting. And then, after three years, we went back home and it was just so dull.”

Although she was only nine years old when she returned to the UK, Nicola knew she wanted to travel overseas as soon as she could. But first she had to finish school.

“I was very quiet and shy and I didn’t have many friends,” she says of her school years. She did A-levels in Art, French and German and fortunately had a wonderful art teacher.

“Mrs James was the only one who recognised anything in me. I would spend lunchtimes and whatever spare time I had in the art room.” Unusually, the school had an old printing press and young Nicola would type and print things for fun.

“The printing press was huge, with pedals and a big wheel – there were no health and safety rules!” She didn’t realise at the time that this experimentation would unconsciously influence her future career choices in publishing.

Nicola performed well in her final high school exams, with Art her best subject, but the country was in a recession and she was told if she wanted to pursue a career in Art she would have to be a teacher.

“I knew I couldn’t be a teacher because I was so quiet – there was no way I would be able to stand up in front of a class back then.”

So she went to Keele University, near Stoke-on-Trent, and completed a degree in European Studies and French. She did not practise art at all during her university years because “when I finished school, I thought that was it for my art”.

At Keele University she met her future husband, Sam, who was also completing a degree in Humanities.

After university, Nicola worked for an advertising agency, learning about print production, with the prime goal to save money to travel – with Sam. They decided to fly to Australia.

“We didn’t have enough money to last for 12 months but we knew that in Australia we would be able to get jobs to pay for our travels. We worked in hospitality and cleaned toilets and we bought a car to drive around – and we fell in love with the country.”

The young couple wanted to stay longer in Australia but they had to return to the UK when their visas expired. They lived in Cheltenham and Nicola found a job with a book publisher, which involved travelling to Europe.

Remarkably, her parents then moved to Australia because her father had applied successfully for a job working on the Sydney Metro project.

“That gave us an excuse to return to Australia to visit them. We tried to get jobs but it was very hard. Sam eventually found work with an Australian company – but the job was in Malaysia.” When Sam’s contract ended after 18 months, they returned to the UK.

They bought a house in Oxford and Nicola worked for Oxford University Press. The couple focused on accumulating sufficient points to qualify for Australian residency and, by the time they succeeded, they had two daughters aged three years and eighteen months. They decided to sell up and move to Australia – and their English friends thought they were completely mad.

Nicola and Sam lived near her parents on Sydney’s Northern Beaches but, despite the epiphany experienced during the life drawing classes in Oxford, Nicola did not pick up her paintbrushes while she, Sam and their daughters settled into their new life in Sydney. And then she discovered she was pregnant with their third daughter.

“I was like – when is it going to be my time?! It was a great lesson in patience and later I realised that things happen when they are meant to.”

About three years later, Nicola started classes at Julian Ashton Art School in Georges Heights.

“It was just once a week on a Friday morning. I would drop our youngest daughter at my mum and dad’s and I learnt how to use oil paints.”

These classes confirmed this was what she wanted to do with her life, “but I didn’t know how to do it”.

Significantly, she opened an Instagram account at this time and looked at what artists were doing.

“I saw that some were doing 100-day challenges – posting one picture a day for 100 days. I hadn’t made any art or shown anything to anyone at this stage but I decided I would do it.”

Nicola had been experimenting with oil pastels with her daughters.

“Pastels are very portable and I could do the works quickly while we were at the park or the beach, so I bought a sketch pad that was 20 centimetres by 20 centimetres and I did one pastel work every day for 100 days. Even if I didn’t like the picture, I would have to post it.

“I learned so much from that experience. I got over my fear of showing my work to the world. I would get positive reactions for drawings I didn’t particularly like, so I realised I had been far too self-critical. It doesn’t matter if people like it or not – just put it out there and let go of that fear of judgment.”

She exhibited a selection of her Instagram drawings at a small art gallery in Avalon and was thrilled when many sold.

“Mostly it was my friends and the school community that bought them – but it was amazing and it gave me confidence.”

Woodcock works on birch panels, which are made specially for her. The panels come framed and she removes the frame, completes the work and then replaces the frame – because she doesn’t want to risk the delicate surface being disturbed by the framer.

“I first put down a brown wash of pastel, to dirty up the colours a little bit and give a nice contrast when I put my colours down. If it is a still life work, I have the subject in front of me and I begin by roughly sketching the outline, proportions and composition. Not very much detail. Then I go in with the pastel and I don’t erase what I’m doing because I don’t like the smudgy pastel look. When the marks are down, it’s done.”

Working in oil pastels, she can’t mix a lot of colours as one can with paints.

“I have a limited number of colours and I have learned how to translate what I am looking at into the colours that I have – to know what works.”

Australia’s native flora has captivated her since she visited the country as a young backpacker.

“I was struck by the abundance of nature here, and the colours and the shapes. It was so different to what I had grown up with or seen before. And I really liked that it wasn’t delicate. An English garden is full of pretty, delicate flowers and while Australian natives are beautiful in their own way, they have that robustness.”

Woodcock’s upcoming exhibition at Michael Reid Southern Highlands is titled “Don’t wish these days away” and features landscapes and still life works inspired by winter wanderings in Ku-ring-gai National Park, the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury region.

The show’s title was inspired by a song written by a friend, Richard Field, who plays in a band with her husband.

“The song was playing in my mind while I was working on this show and I have used some of the lyrics as titles for the individual works. I was thinking about family trips when we walked down a bush track to a creek on a lovely winter’s day – and I feel like those days are passing now as the girls grow up. They don’t want to do that with us so much any more.

“So there’s a bit of sadness but also a real appreciation of how you need to make the most of every day.”

Don’t wish these days away is showing at Michael Reid Southern Highlands from September 4 till October 5, 2025 .

Aleks attended primary school in Exeter and then Moss Vale, and visited his grandparents’ property whenever he was allowed.

“Sid grew up with horses and his family used horse-drawn lorries and wagons in their haulage and scrap metal collection business, based in Flood Street, Leichardt,” says Aleks. “They also used to help muster cattle down Parramatta Road to Homebush sale yards.”

When horses became obsolete, in the business sense, Sid said he was done with horses.

“But a few years later he bought a farm in Putty and it just happened that the bloke next door was a draught horse farmer and somehow got wind of the fact that Sid had a fair bit of horse experience. Sid came home one day and found a pair of grey horses in the yards. Owen, the neighbour, said: ‘You can break them in for me, Sid.’ And that’s how he got hooked back into working with horses again.”

The properties in Putty were small but in those days farmers were allowed to graze their cattle in Wollemi National Park.

“They would muster cattle on horseback through the national park to the sale yards in Singleton. My grandfather had the best memories of that time. He was living the dream.”

When cattle grazing was banned from Wollemi National Park, “farmers could no longer make a living just off the size of their properties so they started leaving and the whole community changed.”

Aleks’ grandmother suggested they look for a new property near Bundanoon, where she used to go on holidays as a child, and Sid and Pat moved Marlie Draught Horse Stud to the current Exeter site in 1983.

Teams of Eight

Berzins’ love of eight-horse plough teams only strengthened during his high school years, when he was a champion rower.

He was a member of The King’s School First Eight that won the GPS Head of the River in 2006 and 2007, and he focused on rowing immediately after school, training at the Australian Institute of Sport and representing Australia at the World Junior Championships in China. Berzins’ coxed four was Australia’s best performing crew at that competition.

Despite the demands of elite rowing training, Aleks would visit and stay with his grandfather as often as possible. He was offered a rowing scholarship by both Princeton and Harvard universities but couldn’t bear the thought of not spending time with his grandfather.

“My pop was my best friend,” he explains. “It was more than just a grandfather-grandson relationship. He was the bees’ knees and my best mate – and he was best man at our wedding.”

Aleks and Karina

When Aleks met Karina, he invited her to his grandparents’ property as soon as possible.

“We had just met and he said let’s have a trip to the farm,” Karina recalls. “I remember getting here and thinking: ‘No one knows where I am, no one knows who Aleks is and the property backs on to the State Forest – this could be dangerous!’”

Karina grew up near Wollongong, was a keen surfer, and studied commerce and science at university.

The couple bought a property in Marulan a decade ago, when they were both still based in Sydney, however they didn’t spend much time there.

“It used to bug Karina, because we’d bought our first house but I refused to stay in it when we came down because I wanted to stay with Pop and work horses,” Aleks says with a grin.

Soon afterwards, Sid started having health problems and asked Aleks if he would be interested in continuing the tradition of breeding and working draught horses. After thinking it over for about a year, Aleks and Karina decided to take the plunge.

Aleks had been working for a plumber since he finished school and when he moved out of Sydney he started his own business, Exeter Plumbing, while Karina found work with Holcim, which operates a quarry in Marulan.

Aleks loved the move south for many reasons. Karina discovered he would eat the breakfast she cooked for him and then he would visit his grandmother next door and enjoy a second cooked breakfast.

On the other hand, drought hit the area just as they moved in.

“Any money we could get our hands on was spent buying hay to keep the horses alive,” Aleks recalls. “I would finish work and then get into a 1986 truck with no air conditioning on Friday night and drive 13 or 14 hours to Victoria to buy hay. I would drive back the next day and unload the hay and then I’d go to work for the week and do the same the next weekend.”

Labour of Love

Breeding and maintaining 50 draught horses, and preserving traditional ploughing practices, is expensive.

Asked if it is a labour of love, Karina describes it as “a money pit”.
But the couple clearly love what they do.

“It’s such an instant society we live in,” Karina says. “Everyone wants everything done now. Stepping back with the slower pace of the horses is so therapeutic. It helps you switch off.”

For Aleks, it also provides a window into history.
“I’ll see an old plough or harvester that might be 100 years old and, because I met so many people from my grandfather’s era who would talk about getting that machine off the train when it was new and how it changed their farming operation, I can see it when it was new and I can appreciate how it was life-changing for them.”

The Berzins own hundreds of horse-drawn machines, including a 10-tonne Bennett Wagon that was built in 1913 by renowned craftsman James Bennett. Each Bennett Wagon had its own name painted on the side, and the one owned by the Berzins is named All The Go.

“The craftsmanship, for something that was really just a truck, is amazing,” Aleks says. “They were the Rolls Royce of their day and they made sure they did a 10 out of 10 job. I love the beauty of forgotten trades.”

In the future, Aleks and Karina dream of building a living museum on their property to showcase their comprehensive collection of horse-drawn farm machinery and allow visitors to watch their horses plough their paddocks.

Turning Point

Aleks participates in the arcane world of single furrow ploughing – indeed he won last year’s Golden Plough, the most prestigious competition in Australia – but for many years he was happy to stay at home rather than go on the road to show off his horses and skills at country shows. This was partly because of the significant costs involved, including spending time away from his plumbing business.

Things changed in 2022, however, when he was invited to drive eight of his draught horses for 14 kilometres down Parramatta Road to Sydney Olympic Park as part of a parade to celebrate the Sydney Royal Easter Show’s 200th anniversary.

Aleks also joined up with two other stud owners to create a 20-horse team that pulled a wool wagon around the main stadium.

“It turned into a small business from there,” Aleks says. “We started saying ‘yes’ to more shows and demonstrating ploughing and cutting chaff with horses – and that led to more invitations.”

The demand for Marlie Stud’s draught horses is growing because, sadly, many of those who had expertise in horse-drawn farm work have died or are now too old to demonstrate their skills. They are about to visit several regional shows in Queensland.

“People just love seeing 11 horses hooked up to a wagon, they find it mesmerising,” Aleks says.
“And it’s great hearing all the stories,” adds Karina. “People come and tell us what they used to do or what their grandfather did – they love talking to you and reminiscing.”

A Family Operation

Aleks and Karina have extremely busy lives, juggling Exeter Plumbing and Marlie Draught Horse Stud while raising their three daughters, aged between five and ten. The stud is very much a family operation, with the girls already heavily involved.

“The kids finish school and head straight to the yards to feed horses and check water,” Karina says. “And they fix fences and do other jobs on weekends.”

“We are lucky because we are here together as a family and we love doing what we are doing,” adds Aleks.

The Berzins would save money by not travelling with their horses and machinery to regional shows, but that’s not what it’s about.

Last year, they participated in a reenactment of Cobb & Co’s final coach run from Surat to Yuleba in Queensland, sharing the journey with families who operate camel and bullock teams.

“We made bugger all out of it,” says Aleks, “but as an experience for the family, spending a week and a bit on the road in Queensland with our team of horses and going down trails I had never been down – you can’t put a price on that.”

For more information visit: marliedraughthorsestud.com

When she finished high school, Mark applied successfully – in fact she was awarded a scholarship – to The Australian National University School of Art (now the School of Art & Design).

“It was the best time of my life and very exciting. The faculty was amazing – Ruth Waller was head of painting and Jude Rae was artist-in-residence during my first year.  The arts faculty really nurtured traditional figurative painting and gave us the skills to paint confidently for still life, landscape, life painting, portraits – and, from that foundation, encouraged us to explore abstraction and other methods of making.”

Mark spent two years at ANU and then transferred to the National Art School in Sydney to finish her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.  She decided to continue her studies at the National Art School and in 2018 graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in painting.

Mark soon realised what genre she was drawn to.

“I loved painting from observation and in around my third year of art school I decided to focus my energies into still life. It was very accessible for me to paint from life continually. I didn’t need a studio. I could do it anywhere, have a very simple set up and always be able to work. I didn’t need to worry about finding someone to sit for me and with landscape painting, while I liked working outside, I also like to be comfortable and cosy – not in the wind and the elements!”

Mark also believed that focusing on still life would help her to support herself as an artist – although she would always need to do some other work. For this reason, she describes her decision to choose still life as “a strategic move”.

The Australian painter Jude Rae has been a strong influence on Mark. She has also been inspired by the still life paintings of the 18^th century French artist Jean Siméon Chardin whose works she describes as “understated, simple, moody, very tonal”. Mark also admired works by the Italian painter Gorgio Morandi that she discovered in the Art Gallery of NSW. She later learned that Chardin had been a significant influence on Morandi.

Asked to describe the development of her practice, Mark replies that she has always been drawn to light and tonality in her painting.

“My earlier paintings were quite dark and moody – I used a very traditional tonal palette when I was learning. Over time I became interested in exploring all aspects of light and that included intense colour. For a while I did bright, highly saturated, colourful works. Now I am moving back to a darker, more natural colour palette.”

Mark has been exhibiting since she was at art school. Her first show was at NG Art Gallery in Chippendale in 2014 and, when that gallery closed, she began exhibiting with Egg & Dart in Wollongong. She was a finalist in the Archibald Prize in 2016 and 2018 and a finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship in 2017 and 2018. It was through the Brett Whiteley scholarship process that Mark and her partner, who is also an artist, met Ben Quilty.

Quilty offered the pair a studio space in the Southern Highlands village of Robertson and the couple decided to spend a year there.

“I am a big winter girl, I love cold weather, so the Robertson climate was gorgeous. We rented a beautiful little cottage, worked from a studio at SHAC [Southern Highlands Art Collective], listened to a lot of music, walked through paddocks and ate at Pizzas in the Mist. It was a very special time.”

In 2020, Amber Creswell Bell reached out to Mark on Instagram and invited her to be in her book titled ‘Still Life: Contemporary Australian Painters’ which was published in 2021. At the same time, Mark began lecturing in observational drawing at University of Wollongong.

Her career was gathering momentum and, after seven years with Egg & Dart, Mark decided she needed to expand her audience. She joined Jan Murphy Gallery in Brisbane in 2021 and Michael Reid Sydney in 2022. The following year, Mark was again a finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and part of Michael Reid’s presence at Sydney Contemporary. In 2024 she had her first solo exhibition with Michael Reid Sydney, titled Night Music. 

Mark has a very busy six months ahead. 

First, she is one of six artists selected to participate in ‘A Celebration of the Still’ now showing at Michael Reid Southern Highlands. She describes her works in this exhibition as “earthy, tonal studies that reveal my interest in reflective surfaces and mid-century furniture and objects”. 

She is preparing for a group exhibition in April of Australian women artists at Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands regional gallery in Bowral, and also her second solo show with Michael Reid Sydney in June.

With these significant commitments on the near horizon, it is no surprise to learn that Mark works every day in the central Wollongong studio she shares with four other artists, including her partner, Nick.

“I come to the studio every day. I don’t have a set time, but I usually arrive about midday or one o’clock and spend about eight hours here. I try to work on a few different pieces at the same time and I am always planning for future works – so the studio is always in a state of flux.”

Mark works in the studio on weekends, though for fewer hours, and continues to lecture at University of Wollongong. She reveals that she likes listening to “some quite twisted podcasts” while she is painting. These include true crime and the What Was It Like series which features conversations with people who have lived through extreme events. She particularly enjoyed the recent episode of this series titled: ‘I Was Buried Alive In A Grave’.

While her partner, Nick, works different hours in the studio, Mark is always accompanied by Schmincke, the greyhound they adopted in 2021 and who is named after a brand of oil paint.

“We wanted a companion while we work in the studio and greyhounds are well suited for studio life. She loves it here. They just want to be near you and she likes it more than home.”

‘A Celebration of the Still’ will be showing at Michael Reid Southern Highlands from 14 February until 16 March.

Full time farming

When Will finished school, he had no idea what he wanted to do. He began studying network engineering at University of Wollongong before working in IT repairs, hotel management and then a marketing role with Microsoft.

He also worked in the family business in Mittagong called The Woodage, which began in 1993 as a timber supplier and evolved into a furniture manufacturer. In 2009, he and a friend, Steve Fitzgerald, purchased The Woodage from his father and his father’s business partner.

Connie, meanwhile, had been hired by Westpac immediately after she completed her degree in maths and finance.

Soon after they increased their business to 1,500 chickens, Will decided to take a year’s break from The Woodage. Connie continued working at Westpac, returning to the office earlier than planned after the birth of their third child.

“I loved The Woodage and building furniture, but it was a lot of hours and it didn’t involve the family at all,” Will says of their decision. “With the farm, I was at home with my family. At the beginning, Harry [the youngest child] was literally with me, strapped to my chest.”

In late 2018, Will sold his half share of The Woodage to his business partner and focused full time on the farm.

Regenerative farming models recommend a three flock system, with each flock six months apart in age to ensure a consistent supply of eggs throughout the year. The oldest chickens are sold at about 18 months of age and there is little difficulty finding buyers.

Mussett Holdings’ eggs are described as “pastured”.

“The difference between pastured and free range is that to be pastured the chickens must always have grass,” Will explains. “You have to keep them moving so they are on pasture. Free range is usually in fixed sheds with a fixed fence around a dirt lot.”

So Mussett Holdings expanded from 500 to 1,500 chickens – and their research into regenerative farming led to expansion plans.

The business mushrooms

“If you are making all this beautiful grass from chickens you should use it, otherwise you have to mow it,” Will says. “You could have livestock eat it, but an organic farm had the stall next to me at Bondi markets and the guy manning it told me about growing gourmet mushrooms in 20 litre buckets filled with straw. He decided to come and work with us.”

They bought two old, insulated shipping containers and started growing a variety of oyster mushrooms on straw from the farm.

“We would cut the grass from the chicken areas and leave it to dry out in the paddock. We would then soak the dried grass in a limewater solution, to pasteurise it, then drain off the excess water and mix it with grain spawns from a variety of oyster mushroom. We then stuffed the mix into 20 litre buckets with holes in them or giant hanging bags.”

The mushroom business started well but was forced to pivot when drought meant there was a dearth of grass to convert into straw.

They changed from a straw-based system to a hardwood sawdust system which allowed them to grow a wider variety of gourmet mushrooms that could be sold to providores and restaurants. These include chestnut, lion’s mane, coral tooth, black pearl as well as king and gold oysters.

Surprisingly, eggs and mushrooms are similar to farm.

“It is daily work for both,” says Will. “You have to collect eggs every day and you have to harvest mushrooms numerous times every day because they grow so fast. You harvest the bulk of the mushrooms first thing in the morning, but the most important harvest is last thing at night because they can double in size overnight.”

The new branch of the business excited Will’s love of problem-solving.

“The heating system for the mushrooms has been repurposed from an old steam boiler from a timber kiln,” he says enthusiastically. “We run the wood boiler during the day and that fills up these old electric hot water storage tanks that were being thrown away with piping hot water. They are not wired up, they are just there as a hot water buffer. A tiny pump then slowly trickles that hot water into radiators in the mushroom rooms.”

COVID booster

Mussett Holdings was one of those businesses that prospered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before COVID, they were making about 60 home deliveries each week – and that number jumped to about 200.

“Home deliveries exploded,” Will recalls, “but at the same time everything we had been sending to cafes, restaurants and retailers just stopped.”

Sydney’s farmers’ markets also benefited during COVID because people were permitted to shop for food during restrictions and lockdowns.

“It went bonkers. Before COVID we would turn over about $1,100 or $1,200 on a good day at the markets and that went to about $4,000.”

COVID behaviours have stuck and home deliveries remain a substantial part of Mussett Holdings’ business – at more than double pre-COVID levels. The volumes became too much for Will to do on his own, so they now use a contractor.

The growth in the business, and the growing demands on Connie, resulted in her resigning from her financial job three years ago.

“I was working for Westpac from home four days a week, the kids were at home because the schools were closed for COVID and I was cleaning eggs at night,” she says. “It was too much and I’d done my time.”

Garden to table

Two years ago, the Mussetts’ interest in regenerative farming led them to look for ways to use their mushroom compost productively. They now offer boxes of seasonal vegetables including carrots, broccoli, cabbage, lettuces, boy choy, broad beans as well as garlic. They are also now experimenting with a range of specialty herbs.

At about the same time, they started farm tours during school holidays and these have proved very popular, despite numbers being limited to 20. The demands of the farm mean that tours are now only offered on Saturdays.

For Will and Connie, regenerative farming is a continuous learning process.

“Every day’s a school day,” says Will. “I don’t think we can take on a whole new category but we would like to continue refining what we are doing and also try specialties that are suited to the by-products of the other elements of the farm. I am fascinated by obscure herbs, so we are seeing if we can make them work in our conditions.”

Their accidental journey didn’t begin with a grand plan and has involved several twists and turns.

“We have just gone with the flow,” says Will, “and it’s fun because you have to think about everything. With farming you encounter heaps of problems and we’re off grid, relying on solar and wind, so there are even more problems to solve.

“To be able to produce your own food is just phenomenal and we get to share it as a family.”

Frith’s discovery of art began about the same time as she was discovering the wonders of nature.

“When I was in Year 2, I sat next to a girl who could draw horses like no one else. One day she said ‘I’m going to be an artist’ and that was the first time I realised there was such a thing as an artist.” This knowledge, combined with compliments from her art teacher, caused young Louise starting to think seriously about art.

By the time she was in high school, Frith was creating portfolios of her work, accompanied with notes and observations, even though this wasn’t a requirement of the course at that time. She remembers the “visual excitement” of being introduced to Edvard Munch and the Symbolists in Year 10 and says she was fortunate to have a very good art teacher who arranged for her students to do life drawing classes after school.

Frith enrolled to study environmental science after high school, but when she learned that a friend was going to develop her drawing skills at TAFE, she decided to take a similar path. Frith was accepted into Meadowbank TAFE and studied there for two years, majoring in photography and sculpture and completing an Associate Diploma in Fine Arts.

She then travelled in Europe for three months and, when she returned, worked for a picture framing business in Crows Nest owned by the legendary Australian actress, Ruth Cracknell, and her husband, Eric.

In 1995, Frith and her partner Luke went to London. They stayed for 15 months and while there Frith attended a course in botanical drawing at Kew Gardens, drew the dahlias in Holland Park and would frequently take her sketch book to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. When she returned home, she worked for the Cracknells again before joining the Goodmans auction house for several years.

There wasn’t much time for her art while Louise and Luke raised young children, but she signed up for several summer schools at the National Art School, including with Suzanne Archer. When her youngest child went to pre-school, Frith enrolled in Jo Bertini’s courses at Willoughby Arts Centre and this proved crucial for her confidence.

“Jo said to me: “You can do this.” It was the right time for me and she was the right person at that time.”

Frith continued to develop her practice, attending workshops with Robert Malherbe, Lucy Culliton and Tim Allen, but she had not yet exhibited her paintings.

“It is so different now with social media and what you can do. Through my 20s, I didn’t feel like there was any chance I was going to show somewhere. I was casting around, but I didn’t really have a clear idea what I was making. Jo Bertini helped crystallise things but Luke was the one who said I needed a studio.”

Frith successfully applied for a space owned by the council above Northbridge library and “things really started to happen. I stopped thinking about what I should be doing and thought about that quote from Matisse: ‘You’ve got to do 500 paintings before you do a good one.’ So it was paint, paint, paint, paint, paint.”

She shared the Northbridge studio with two other artists, Jane Guthleben and Peter Finlay, and their group exhibition at Willoughby Arts Centre was Frith’s first public show. Frith then exhibited with her friend, Fiona Smith, at Ewart Gallery in 2018 and White Rhino in 2019. 

Increasingly, friends urged her to post her work on Instagram. Frith followed this advice, and soon afterwards she was contacted by Amber Creswell Bell, who is Director, Emerging Art for the Michael Reid galleries. Creswell Bell invited Frith to join Melanie Waugh and Emily Gordon in a show in late 2019 and then The Country Interior group exhibition, a collaboration with Country Style magazine at Michael Reid Murrurundi in March 2020. 

Over the past four years, Frith has exhibited regularly across Michael Reid’s Murrurundi, Northern Beaches and Southern Highlands galleries and she was thrilled to be part of Murrurundi’s presence at Sydney Contemporary in 2022.

Frith’s latest exhibition continues to reveal her experience in the landscape, but she “wants to draw people’s focus into the detail. Most people walk into the landscape and they’ll look around and see the broader view but this is also about drawing them in. I’m inviting them to have a closer look.”

Most of the paintings are of scenes in North Head, which is a continual source of inspiration for Frith. “I go there about once a month to see how it’s transformed, because every time I go it’s different. In June, all the wattle is out and in November the flannel flowers are out and right now it’s just incredible.”

She has loved Australian native flowers since her childhood growing up by Little Blue Gum Creek and the flannel flowers that grew in Lane Cove National Park were a favourite of her mother and one of the first plants young Louise could identify.

The entrance to Frith’s home boasts a carefully curated garden which plays an important part in her daily routine.

“Before I start painting every morning, I potter around in there because it transports me to a different place in my head. It breaks the over-thinking part of me and puts me in a more relaxed state before I go into the studio and get to work.”

This work involves Frith’s time-consuming technique.

“When I’m painting a flannel flower, for example, I paint the flower and then I cut in with the paint all around that flower. I don’t paint a background layer and then paint the flannel flower on top. It’s just the way my painting has developed.” 

She also employs the “limited palette” technique she learned from a master class with Elisabeth Cummings a decade ago.

“It is where you take a select number of colours and you only use those,” Frith explains. “For me, that helps to produce a more cohesive painting.”

Frith used to work in the corner of the family kitchen, but in 2022 she moved to a studio in the backyard. “That has been an absolute game-changer,” she says, “not having people interrupt me – and the space!”

She has progressively established herself since her first group show five years ago and is enjoying her artistic journey.

“I have always treated it as a ride” she says. “I don’t really know where it’s going, so I’ll just keep on pedalling and see where it takes me.”

Jane was born in Wagga Wagga, where her energetic and entrepreneurial father ran an antiques business known as The Junque Shop. Athol Salter sourced his stock by travelling around the countryside, buying bargains at clearance sales and auctions. He had grown up in regional Victoria and, after excelling at David Jones’ Young Executive course, opened a shop selling curtains. He placed antique furniture in the shop to add ambience and soon found the furniture sold better than the curtains.

“That was the turning point and Athol decided he wanted to sell antiques,” explains Jane.

Following a suggestion from a friend, Athol decided to hold an auction in Canberra. “It went off like a frog in a sock and Dad realised he needed to be in that market.”

So Athol Salter opened a new antiques business in the old theatre in Hall, taking his wife Margrett and young family with him.

“We lived not far from the shop,” says Jane. “Mum and Dad were awarded the tender for the historic Ginninderra Village schoolhouse, built in 1883. It sat on about five acres of land and Athol had the idea to turn it into a tourist attraction, like a historic village. It was like a mini-Sovereign Hill.” 

Jane fondly remembers her “amazing” childhood, full of adventures.

“We built our own house and there was a paddock with sheep, Joe the goat, a donkey, a pony, chooks and ducks and all these animals would cause chaos. On Saturdays, I would knock on the door of the restaurant and the chef would give me two bits of white bread with a roast potato in the middle of it, dripping butter, and that was my lunch.”

Athol first visited the UK to buy antiques in 1974 and was soon travelling there six times a year, buying from dealers set up in vast warehouses along the Thames.

“He was always thinking outside the square. At that time, lamb exports to England were huge and there were a lot of refrigerated containers coming back to Australia empty. Dad negotiated cheap shipping by packing antiques into what would otherwise have been empty containers.”

Jane enjoyed school and all the opportunities it offered her. She went to a small primary school in the Canberra suburb of Lyneham and when her older brother was sent off to high school, she insisted she should also go to boarding school. From the age of nine she was a boarder, first at Gib Gate and then at Frensham, both in Mittagong. After school, she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at University of Canberra. The primary focus was Communications but she “tacked on” law subjects as well as marketing and public relations. These additional courses would prove invaluable in her future career.

Jane loved studying Drama at school and dreamed of working in theatre, so after University she travelled to Melbourne “and just knocked on doors”. She found some unpaid work experience at Victorian Opera but her dream didn’t pan out as expected and she moved to Sydney to work for the MindBodySpirit Festival and then a series of office jobs.

At the same time, she was organising garage sales and continuing to liaise with her father about antiques. She had met her future husband, Bob Crowley, and “he was the one who said I was mad to work in office jobs when I could be working with my Dad, doing what I love”.

In 2000, Bob and Jane decided to spend time in the United Kingdom and this experience confirmed her passion for the antiques business.

“Athol said to me: ‘While you’re over there why don’t you buy a container, fill it with furniture and send it out.’ It was like this light turned on. I bought myself an old British Gas van, a Ford, called it Daisy and drove to auctions all around the UK. The learning curve was off the charts. I would store the furniture in a little stable at the back of the house we were renting in the village of Falfield and when I had enough to fill a container I would send it to Athol.”

After three years in the UK, Bob and Jane – now with two young children – were ready to come home. They moved into an old house that Athol was renovating in The Southern Highlands and Jane started working with her father. Athol had sold Antiques Hall 14 years earlier and was now operating The Shed in Mittagong. 

Three years later, in 2008, Athol and Jane decided to make a significant change.

“The Shed was freezing in winter and like an oven in summer. I believed we had reached our potential, so when the front shop at the Acre became available we took it. Back then it was the old Electricity Commission building. The zoning had recently been changed from industrial to retail and Athol saw the opportunity to open an antiques market. The site was a complete mess, but we negotiated a rent. I think the real estate agent thought we were insane.”

Dirty Janes opened with just eight dealers but “word got out quickly and six months later the hall was full”.

Why did they call their new business Dirty Janes?

“It really has nothing to do with me,” Jane says convincingly. “We wanted a name that was easy to remember and also had a back story. That’s when we learned about this convict girl.”

Jane Dumphrey was born in Northern Ireland, the daughter of a “rag and bone” man. She started working for him when she was five years old. Both her parents had died by the time she turned 15 and she moved to a poorhouse in Belfast. She found a good job working as a maid but her boyfriend convinced her to steal some silver and Dumphrey was transported to Sydney in 1840. After impressing the captain and his wife on the journey,  Jane was referred to the captain’s cousin, Tom Gully, who owned the general store in Gundagai. When she arrived covered in dust and mud, her new boss called her “Dirty Jane”. The convict girl worked hard and when Gully died decades later he left the business to her.

For Athol and Jane, community is at the core of Dirty Janes.

“Having a shop in the main street of any town is not only expensive, it can be really lonely. All the decisions fall to you and you have to be an expert at everything. We wanted to provide support so people could look to us to manage the back end of the business while they focus on the creative stuff. I think that has become our North Star and our stall holders really appreciate it. We do the marketing, sell their stock, arrange delivery and they know they will be paid at the end of the week.”

Dirty Janes started well but the building was under a demolition order which meant they could be evicted with six months’ notice. After five years, the Government decided to sell the building and a developer was rumoured to have plans to turn the site into a mall. Jane and Bob quickly put together a business case and borrowed as much money as they could. They lodged their offer, together with a bank cheque for a 10% deposit, just before the 5pm Friday deadline. 

“I still remember the real estate agent calling me at about 5.30pm telling me that we’d got it. It was fantastic – but we now had this enormous mortgage. We ran the business on a shoestring. Athol would bring in the dealers and I was the accountant, the marketer, the office manager – I was doing absolutely everything. And I had three kids under the age of six!”

By 2016, Dirty Janes was a Southern Highlands icon with ninety stallholders. In 2018, Athol and Jane decided to expand to Canberra. They spent most of 2019 putting the plans together.

“In January 2020 we went to Canberra for three months to do the final renovations. We opened on 20 March with 90 stall holders – and the country went into lockdown on 25 March. The timing was just crap.

“We thought at first, delusionally, that we could carry on. But we couldn’t, of course, and we closed Canberra. Then we closed Bowral. We had to lay off about 20 staff but we told the stall holders we wouldn’t charge rent while we were closed. So our income dried up, literally overnight. I went home and just wanted to dig a hole in the garden and bury myself. I was cross with myself because I felt I should have seen it coming and I was stumbling, like so many of us were.”

Dirty Janes reopened three months later “and trade took off, although we still had to deal with significant challenges like social distancing”.

When the second lockdown was implemented, Jane and her team were much better prepared.  They had improved their social media skills and enhanced their online presence while also introducing a “click and collect” type service. 

They were difficult times, but what about the current economic environment?

“I’ve traded through the GFC, recession and COVID but it is really tough out there at the moment,” Jane says. “People are hurting. 

“There is a lot of uncertainty and whenever that happens there is a tendency to save instead of spend. Big purchases are few and far between, but people still want to treat themselves. It’s so important that we provide one of the best experiences you can have in a retail environment. Our staff are trained to interact with our customers, to greet them and, for example, tell them they can bring their dog in. This really reverberates with our customers.”

The tough trading environment highlights the importance of being agile.

“You cannot afford to sit still,” Jane says. “You have to be constantly looking at what is going on in your community, and the broader community, and you have to be innovative.”

This approach is epitomised by the opening of a third Dirty Janes in Orange earlier this year. They now look after about 200 small businesses across three locations and employ about 50 staff.

Jane stresses that each Dirty Janes must have its own character, connecting with its community. She understands the convenience of shopping online but is passionate about the importance of supporting local businesses.

“It’s up to every single person to hold on to the small local businesses in the regions. Franchises are expanding their reach and it’s getting to the point where you drive into a country town and you’re not really sure where you are – but you can see that franchise and the other franchise and the other one. 

“We have to hold on to the uniqueness of each regional area because that is the community, that’s where you anchor yourself. If we lose that, we’re losing community and that’s a really sad prospect.”

National Art School in Sydney was a huge change for this 17-year-old girl from Gleniffer – but Waugh relished the opportunity.

“I was like a sponge, absorbing everything. People talk about art school now and how they don’t learn how to draw or paint. My experience was the total opposite – I learnt the fundamentals of drawing and painting. 

“I had incredible teachers. The one who I think taught me the most about how to draw was David Serisier, an abstract painter from the New York school. There was also Euan Macleod, Wendy Sharpe, Aida Tomescu, Noel McKenna, Susan Archer, David Fairbairn – I learnt from so many amazing artists. It was a really cool time to be at art school.”

Despite Waugh’s love of art and the successful completion of her degree, “I still didn’t think I could do it commercially”. So after graduation she found a job with Parkers Art Supplies in The Rocks – and she worked there for about a decade.

“It was a great education, getting to know the materials and also other artists.”

In 2007 and 2008 Waugh completed a Master of Arts degree at the College of Fine Arts “and then I went totally AWOL. A friend invited me to go and work with her and her husband on a super yacht in The Caribbean. I decided I had to grab the opportunity and had an amazing time in a very beautiful part of the world.”

When she returned to Australia, Waugh successfully applied for an Artist in Residence program sponsored by the law firm Curwoods. This included free studio space in Sydney’s Australia Square and her exhibition at the end of the residency, titled Island, sold out.

Waugh continued to paint after the Curwoods residency, but she decided to become an art teacher to provide a regular source of income. She taught high school students during the day and adults in the evenings. She found a better studio in Summer Hill and began posting images of her work on Instagram. These paintings caught the eye of Amber Creswell Bell, Michael Reid’s Director, Emerging Art and Waugh was invited to participate in several group exhibitions. She also had a solo exhibition at Robin Gibson Gallery in Darlinghurst.

Her increasing success as an artist meant Waugh needed to consider her career options more closely.

“I was still teaching full time and I felt I wasn’t giving a full go to either teaching or painting. I had to make a decision, to choose either teaching or painting. And then COVID happened. 

“My mother passed away, not from COVID, but it was a horrible year and a really emotional time. I decided that life was too short, that I had to do this, I had to paint. Mum and dad had always supported me and told me to chase my dreams.”

Full circle

Waugh’s father had died a decade earlier, so after her mother’s passing she and her sister inherited the family property at Gleniffer. Waugh decided not only to focus on art full time but to move to her childhood home.

“My husband can work remotely so we moved back to the house and property I grew up in. Dad liked tennis and he spent hours each week maintaining a grass tennis court. He also built a tennis shed to keep all the tennis equipment in and we turned that shed into my studio.”

Being able to paint full time was a blessing.

“When I paint every day, my style is so much freer and looser. My brush strokes are more confident. I love that expressionistic style.” 

When she was at Art School, Waugh was most influenced by abstract artists such as Elisabeth Cummings and Ann Thomson “because that was what we were fed and I drank that Kool Aid. Also early Mondrian. Then I became interested in the Expressionists and Edvard Munch is probably my favourite painter. When I left Art School I was really into Figurative artists like Edward Hopper and David Hockney.”

Today she describes herself as an Expressionist landscape painter who works exclusively in oils.

Waugh was invited to present a solo exhibition, Beauty & Danger, at Michael Reid Northern Beaches in December 2021. The sell out success of this show led to her being selected to hold another solo show, Moonlight Studies, to open the new Michael Reid Southern Highlands gallery in March 2022. This was followed by The Stars Look Very Different Today at Michael Reid Murrurundi in July 2022 and Soft Summer at Michael Reid Northern Beaches in April 2024. During these years, Waugh also participated in a number of group shows and was part of the Michael Reid presence at the 2022 Sydney Contemporary Art Fair.

Just over a year ago, in March 2024, Waugh gave birth to her son Phoenix.

“It has changed my practice so much. I can’t believe I had all the time in the world before he came along and now I have to really hone in on the time I have. It makes me more efficient with my time in the studio. It’s a juggling act and my husband, Dan, has been amazing. When he finishes work at 5 o’clock, I hand Phoenix over and work in my studio until late. And I’ll often get up early and work before Dan starts at nine. I also do a lot of work in the studio on weekends.”

Apart from time, has the arrival of Phoenix had any other impact on her painting?

“I think my palette is a bit softer and a friend told me that she thinks my painting as whole is softer. I certainly didn’t mean to do that.”

High Country

Waugh’s current exhibition at Michael Reid Southern Highlands is titled High Country.

“I like painting places that are familiar to me or special to me – places where I go to breathe. This time I have gone inland to a National Park called Cathedral Rock. It’s a beautiful landscape with volcanic rock that is two million years old. There are incredible compositions and shapes, like rock sculptures.

“I would like the audience to feel immersed in these paintings. Hopefully I’ve succeeded in doing this by not painting them from a vantage point in the distance but rather from right inside the landscape. I’m hoping the energy of the area is shown in the brush strokes.

“The end game for me is to use as few brush strokes as possible to create the scene.”

Waugh has achieved a huge amount in the four years since deciding to dedicate herself to art full time. This includes three solo shows in the past year since giving birth to Phoenix. Despite these achievements, and while she believes she is heading in the right direction with her practice, she feels the need to make up for lost time. She is driven to do more and “give it a red hot go”. Her future aims include working in a larger scale and travelling more widely in Australia.

“There are just so many landscapes to paint – we are truly spoilt for choices here.”