Waipara Gorge, North Canterbury

Rita Angus was a skilled and confident watercolourist. In the 1930s, when she was living in Christchurch, she would often take painting trips around Canterbury - using the trips to produce watercolours like this one.

Angus paints this rocky landscape with bold washes of colour. A slab of land stretches out into the sea, its rolling undulations marked by changes in colour and line. The summer heat is captured in scorched grass, the structure and shapes of the land demarcated with fluid lines of paint. Currents in the sea are shown as different shades of blue.

Rita Angus was incredibly observant of the world around her, from the fine detail of flowers, insects and leaves, to changes in the weather, wind, and geology of a landscape.