Painting Queensland: Turning a State into a Vintage Poster
This piece is where my This is Australia series began.
It started as a small creative break between commissions. I had been painting to brief for a while, and I felt the urge to create something purely for myself. Something more illustrative, more playful, and less constrained by someone else’s vision.
Around the same time, I found myself drawn to vintage Australian tea towels. I loved the way they captured entire states in a single composition, filled with icons, animals, landmarks, and personality. They weren’t trying to be perfect or realistic. They were trying to tell a story.
So I decided to try and make my own version.
Queensland was the obvious place to begin.
Capturing Queensland through my eyes
Queensland is home.
I grew up in rural Queensland, in a small country town where my primary school had just 40 kids. Now I live in the busy city, although I’m grateful that I still get to work from home and enjoy my own quiet little bubble.
Every school holiday, we would head to the Sunshine Coast, and Cotton Tree holds so many of those memories. Long days outside, salty air, and that unmistakable feeling of being completely free from routine.
I still remember the year we forgot the sunscreen. My sister and I spent most of the week hiding in a dark room, wearing Dad’s oversized shirts and covered in aloe vera gel, waiting for the blisters to fade. Ah, summer.
This artwork became my way of capturing Queensland as I knew it. Not a literal version, but a personal one shaped by memory, familiarity, and feeling.
It began as a digital collage. I mashed together dozens of reference photos, trying to work out how to fit everything that reminded me of home into a single composition. I included animals, native flowers, landscapes, and one of the iconic “big things,” building a framework that balanced recognisable symbols with personal meaning.
Once the composition was resolved, I moved into sketching and then painting, bringing each element to life and allowing the piece to gradually take on its own identity.
When the project grew into something more
This piece was originally meant for my own wall.
But as I worked on it, I realised there was something bigger here. One idea led naturally to another, and I began thinking about how every state carries its own visual language and emotional identity.
Australia is full of stories like this.
So I set myself a challenge to paint every state, one by one, and began sharing the process as part of my This is Australia 30-day series. What started as a single personal piece quickly grew into a collection that explored the country through memory, symbolism, and illustration.
The beginning of the series
At its heart, this series became about capturing the Australian spirit. The animals, the plants, the landmarks, and the quirks that make each place feel distinct and familiar at the same time.
Queensland was where it all began, and it remains the foundation for everything that followed.
You can follow the This is Australia series and see the remaining states over on Instagram at @laura.hamzic.art.
What happens next
I’ll be releasing This is Australia: Queensland as a fine art print, and I’m already exploring the potential for it to evolve into other pieces as the collection grows. There is so much possibility within this series, and I’m excited to see where it leads.
If you’d like to be the first to know when prints and future releases become available, you can join my email list below. I’ll share updates as the collection unfolds.