After years as an architect in Australia, Sue Tennent has swapped pen for brush, and she now paints full-time.

Born in Papua New Guinea, growing up in Australia, and now settled in Fairlie, NZ - Sue has always felt like she has lived in a "borrowed land".

She is fascinated by the 'uneasy history' of European colonisation.

Sues' original oil paintings focus on the flora and fauna that the early settlers carried heedlessly with them from their places of origin, most often to the detriment of the natural environment of the New World.

"I paint found and collected leaves and feathers hanging on the 'Empire pink' threads and set them to delicately hanging, precariously balanced to call to mind how vulnerable the islands native plants and animal life is to change...

.. as a migrant and a new citizen I am still learning about the strange and exotic plant and bird life I encounter.  I find them wondrously beautiful.  To carefully observe and paint them is to fall under their thrall".