Arrowtown (sketch for 'Central Otago') 1953

Rita Angus’s watercolour, ‘Arrowtown’, captures the landscape with fluid washes of colour that blend and bleed into one another. The image emerges through intuition, like a dreamscape half-remembered. I can imagine Angus standing there, brush in hand, feeling the air and light shifting as she paints. The yellow ochre hills roll gently, punctuated by dabs of green, suggesting the scrubby vegetation. A few bold blue lines cut across the foreground, maybe a river, maybe a road. She’s simplifying the landscape down to its bare essentials. It’s not about capturing a perfect likeness but rather a feeling, a memory of a place. There’s a lightness, a sense of freedom in her touch. You can almost feel the breeze rustling through the trees. Angus’s work reminds us that painting isn’t just about representation; it's about feeling, about being present in the world, and about the ongoing conversation between artists. It’s always open, never fixed.