Banks Peninsula Hills 1933

This watercolour of the Banks Peninsula Hills was made by Rita Angus, who was born in New Zealand in 1908. It makes me think about how an image comes into being, shifting, emerging through intuition, but also trial and error. I feel for artists looking at landscapes and trying to capture all of that space on a tiny rectangle. Rita’s palette is very controlled, all muted blues and browns, applied in flat, even washes. See how she delineates the forms of the hills with thin, dark lines. I love how these simple lines carve out the contours of the land, giving the hills a geometric, almost crystalline quality. It's hard to capture the essence of a place, but there's something about this painting that feels distinctly New Zealand. Artists are in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas, inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations. There are no fixed or definitive readings.