Texas hills 1994

Queenie McKenzie decided to take up painting in the mid-1980s, having observed her close friend Rover Thomas creating art over many years. She showed her first works to Thomas, who encouraged her with the words, ‘This good painting, Auntie. Keep painting’.

For McKenzie, painting was a way of formally teaching her culture. She had a singularly close relationship to her Country: ‘Every rock, every hill, every water, I know that place backwards and forwards, up and down, inside out. It's my Country and I got names for every place’. In this artwork, McKenzie has depicted the hills adjacent to old Texas Downs Station with which she was intimately familiar.