Why Country Life Makes Us Feel So Grounded (It's Not Just in Your Head)
Coming Home Over the Ridge: How Country Landscapes Shaped Who I Am as an Artist
There's a moment I've been chasing my whole life.
It happens on a particular stretch of road — driving over the ridge from Christmas Hills, when the land suddenly opens up and the valley spreads out below you like a long, slow exhale. It happened to me as a child. It still happens now. The second I crest that hill and the countryside unfolds beneath me, something in my body quietly lets go. My shoulders drop. My breath deepens. And somewhere in my chest, a voice says: there you are.
I grew up in suburbia. I was not, by any conventional measure, a country girl. But even as a child, looking out over that valley, I knew — in a way that bypassed logic entirely — that country life was where I belonged. Not just something I admired from a distance, but something that lived in me. It was the landscape I was made for.
(My brain, for the record, did not get the memo for many years. But we'll get to that.)
Why Country Life Makes Us Feel So Grounded (It's Not Just in Your Head)
I'll be honest with you — my mind is a bit of a circus. Not in a catastrophic way, just in the way where three thoughts arrive simultaneously, none of them finish, and somehow I've ended up Googling something completely unrelated at 11pm. You know the type.
Which is probably why the countryside does what it does to me. Because the land doesn't care about my mental noise. It just... is. Quietly, stubbornly, beautifully present. And eventually, I follow.
If you've ever felt an inexplicable sense of calm driving through open farmland, walking beside a paddock, or simply gazing at a wide Australian sky, you're not imagining it. Science backs up what our bodies already know.
Research in environmental psychology — including the widely studied Attention Restoration Theory — shows that natural landscapes, particularly calm, open countryside, actively reduce cortisol levels and restore our cognitive resources. Unlike the relentless stimulation of city environments, country landscapes offer what researchers call "soft fascination": the kind of gentle, effortless attention that lets the nervous system rest. Rolling hills. A stand of eucalypts. Light shifting over a golden paddock. These aren't just beautiful — they are physiologically restorative.
Studies have also found that exposure to natural environments lowers heart rate and blood pressure, improves mood, and increases feelings of belonging and identity. There's even emerging research suggesting that certain people have a stronger neurological response to natural environments — meaning for some of us, the pull toward the Australian countryside isn't a lifestyle preference. It's wired in.
Which explains a lot about that ridge at Christmas Hills. And honestly, a lot about me.
Why I Keep Coming Back to Landscape — In Life, and On Canvas
When I started Young by Design as a nursery artist, I painted all kinds of things. Whimsical characters. Playful patterns. The things you'd expect to find in a child's world.
But even then, even in those early years, I kept coming back to landscapes. Not because the market demanded it. Not because it was the practical, sensible, "build your brand" choice. (Sensible has never been my strong suit, if we're being real.) But because painting country landscapes was the thing that lit a fire in my belly — and more than that, it was the thing that finally made my brain go quiet.
That's not nothing. For a mind that runs like mine, quiet is everything.
There's something about translating that feeling — the one I get on the ridge at Christmas Hills — onto canvas that feels like the truest thing I do. When I'm lost in a landscape, in the layers of light and colour and the particular way the Australian bush holds itself in late afternoon, the noise stops. The circus packs up and goes home. And what's left is just me, the painting, and something that feels a lot like peace.
Over time, I stopped fighting it. I let the landscapes take over completely. Now, Australian country landscape art is not just what I paint — it's the lens through which I see everything. The soft greys of a winter morning. The warm ochre of dry summer grass. The way the light in regional Victoria is different from anywhere else on earth.
Painting for the People Who Feel It Too
When I create country landscape art, I'm painting for the person who knows that feeling — who has stood somewhere in rural Australia and felt, inexplicably, like they had arrived. Maybe your mind runs a little loud too, and you're looking for something on your wall that reminds you to slow down. Maybe you grew up in the country and now live in the city, and you miss the particular kind of quiet that only open land can offer. Maybe you've always been drawn to country style interiors and never quite understood why.
I understand why. And I'm painting it for you.
Calming country style art that doesn't just decorate a space — it changes the feeling of it. Country home landscape wall art that grounds you the same way the real thing does. Because I believe the right piece of Australian landscape art on your wall can do what that ridge at Christmas Hills does for me every single time.
It can make your mind go quiet.
It can remind you to breathe.
It can whisper: you're home.
Browse my collection of hand painted original country artworks and country style landscape prints — painted in regional Victoria, for homes that want to feel like somewhere the land breathes.
Click Here for The Yarra Valley Collection - Prints
Click Here for The Gates Through the Countryside Collection - Prints
