'Smell of wool shed': Country life nostalgia helps painter's work go viral

The post, which shows her wearing overalls and a broad-brimmed hat while painting sheep on a canvas, as actual sheep gather in the foreground of the shed, garnered over 1,300 likes in just five days.

Ms Wilson thought the appeal must be the words on her post, where she wrote: "Love painting sheep and strangely love the smells of a shearing shed".

"It's bizarre because Facebook's been pretty dead," Ms Wilson told the Daily Liberal.

The post "seems to have struck" a chord with readers, with one Facebook user writing: "The smell of the lanolin soaked wood is fantastic."

When the Liberal spoke with Ms Wilson, she had had "enquiries all day" about her commissions, and she was almost booked out for the year.

"I've had a fair few [enquiries] from overseas, which is not very often I'd send something overseas, so the post has obviously gone everywhere," she said.

Many of Ms Wilson's commissions come from photographs, and she has painted farm houses, paddocks, and lots of stock and landscapes.

But when she's painting for herself, she always paints sunsets and sunrises, and misty fog or a moon over the river.

"I obsessively walk every morning. I walk around the river and we live on the river and just love it," Ms Wilson said, explaining her love of rivers and misty mornings.

When Ms Wilson was a child, she was sent to her grandparents' farm in central western Victoria every school holidays. She credits these visits with her love of painting sheep scenes.

"Obviously there's an affinity with sheep and cattle and shearing sheds that sort of came about," she said.

"Nostalgia" is big in Ms Wilson's paintings and she taps into her memories to portray this on the canvas.

"I paint horses because, [my grandparents] always had horses, and they're in the racing industry still," she said.

"Then at my parents house, they always had their thoroughbreds there. So you'd wake up and there'd be a sunrise with the fog and thoroughbreds at your kitchen window."

Ms Wilson sometimes sells her paintings at Foray Design Store, Dubbo.