Sketch for 'Central Otago' 1953

Rita Angus made this watercolor, 'Sketch for Central Otago', in New Zealand. It has the feeling of a half-remembered dream. Was she painting from life? Or from her imagination, piecing together memories and daydreams of the landscape? I can imagine her, carefully applying these washes of paint, one layer at a time. Notice how the watercolor bleeds and blends, creating soft, hazy forms. It is as if the artist is feeling her way through the landscape, trying to capture its essence with delicate touches of color. The hills roll into one another; the sky and land blur. It has a kind of topographical and cartographical curiosity, like the artist is mapping the space. The limited palette gives everything this feeling of calm, this sense of quietude. And it is interesting to think of how later artists respond to this kind of close looking, this kind of stillness. It's an ongoing conversation, you know?