This painting is one of a series of 2004/05 paintings entitled Sheep Country.The artist was interested in the marks that sheep made on the land, while using the sheep-like tendency to follow one another, as a metaphor for the stifling of lateral and free thinking in a conservative country. The two species suggested in the title are sheep and humans, and while their tracks (hooves and tyres) follow each other in the foreground, they are tangentially separated in middle distance when the sheep take a sharp left hand turn up the slope. While the two species have agendas different from each other, they are bound relentlessly by their own stubborn predispositions. The paintings of Sheep Country were mainly of the South Island. Two Species, Two Agendas is of the Manorburn area of Central Otago. MARK CROSS