I grew up in a house that smelled of oil paint, watching my father work without ever being taught. Thirty years on, my paintings begin on a poured ground, half accident and half intention, made somewhere in the middle where the paint and I meet. That middle is where the series takes its name: The Middle Country. My cockatoos and figures are all one thing, my family, painted over and over in a glowing landscape, with the conviction that real happiness comes from within. Painting full time since 1998, Brisbane, Australia.