Artists Sue Michael and Mark Thomson share a profound fondness for the ‘settled areas’ of South Australia - the Mid North, the Mallee and Eyre Peninsula.

The small towns where life endures and small mercies are to be found: the stoic geraniums flowering in an old paint tin. Or the Op shop with its racks of old clothes and the gentle banter between the ladies working there.

Love, meaning and happiness stubbornly persist. And the stillness at sunrise and sunset are magical.
“Within the simple twigs, dust and modest domestic objects lies a life force, a momentum that overcomes the geographical challenges of these places,” says Sue Michael.

Sue’s paintings are often notations from a scanned horizon, glimpses or taxonomical sortings, using the heart as a sensory organ. Larger works consider the complexities of place in a consideration of the complexities that a traveller motoring past often overlooks.