In 1914, Mary Cooper Edwards migrated to Australia from England and, from 1933 to 1937, studied with the influential Sydney artist Adelaide Perry. Perry emphasised the importance of pattern and structure in printmaking, and encouraged her students to exhibit with the pioneering collective known as the Contemporary Group.

While there are scant details about Edwards’s life in Queensland, her address in 1937 was listed as the Wynnum home of the artist Anne Alison Greene. Edwards is also known to have taught at the all-girls school Fairholme College, Toowoomba, and to have died in Brisbane in 1963.

Queensland landscape is indicative of the elegant simplicity Edwards achieved with her linocuts. The rolling hills, winding road and ploughed fields provided her with the perfect subject matter to explore the immediacy of the medium, while several elements, such as the house perched on stumps and the heavy, rain-laden sky, are evocative of Queensland.