Hāwea artist Julia Sternkopf has listed a painting of the proposed Bendigo-Ophir open pit mine on Trade Me this week for $1 billion. A landscape painter, for Sternkopf’s piece entitled LandMine, she first painted Bendigo as it is, then painted the mine into it. The result shows the proposed open pits, a 2km-long dam holding 18 million cu m of toxic tailings and the infrastructure required to extract gold from the site, she said. "My work is deeply rooted in the natural beauty of our surroundings. "The open pit mine proposed by an Australian company would permanently scar the landscape and leave behind staggering amounts of hazardous waste. "Painting is what I know, it’s what I can do and how I am speaking up about this," she said. A video of her painting the mine into the landscape piece was first posted to her Instagram account on 28 April. Ms Sternkopf is a member of Natural Capital Central Otago, a group which has campaigned against the mine. The Trade Me listing was a collective idea.…