Category: Genre – Land/City/Seascape

90 x 60 cm / Oil / Canvas

When I look at this painting, I remember wanting the sky to carry the weight of the entire piece. I gave the clouds almost all of the work to do, painting them in a long, slow, horizontal rhythm that stretches from left to right across most of the canvas. Low above the horizon, just over the trees, I painted a thin band of pale light—not the fire of a sunset, but that specific, soft yellow-green light that comes after the day has already let go. It’s the color of the last minutes before a winter evening, when the day is quietly folding its hands.

Below that vast sky, I wanted the land to feel completely calm. I laid out a wide green paddock stretching across the foreground. To the far left, near the trees, I placed a single cow grazing alone, balanced in the middle of the field by a small group of three standing close together, heads down, just doing their slow cow things. I anchored the bottom of the canvas with a simple wooden fence, leaving a small gate open on the right—a quiet doorway back into the field, waiting for no one in particular.

I used the trees to frame the scene like a quiet audience. On the left, I gathered a cluster of tall, dark trees, painting them almost like a small crowd leaning in. On the right, I ran a row of pines. In the space between them, I let a few small farm buildings sit low and quiet on the horizon, deliberately letting them get almost swallowed by the haze.

My goal for this piece was stillness. Not emptiness—the field is full of grass, full of life, and full of small presences—but the very quiet end of a long day. I wanted the cows to feel completely unaware of being watched, and the trees to remain perfectly still. I painted the clouds as if they had slowed down on purpose, just to stay a little longer.

For me, this painting isn’t really about the farm itself. It’s about capturing that one thin, fleeting moment when the day changes—when light becomes memory—and everything in the world seems to hold its breath for a second before night comes. That is what Oaramu in the evening means to me.

90 x 60 cm / Oil / Canvas

I painted this to see if I could handle high midday light without letting the whole scene turn flat and washed out. Noon is usually a nightmare for landscape painters because the sun bleaches all the contrast. To counter that, I kept the blues in the lake deep and weighted, using them as an anchor so the bright white glare in the center actually shimmers instead of just looking like blank canvas.

Across the bay, I wanted a clean, graphic look for the houses climbing the hill, contrasted against the messy, organic texture of the native flax bush in the foreground. On the right side, the cool shadows of the dark treeline and those distant, snow-dusted ridges provide some needed breathing room from the heavy sunlight.

The ultimate goal was to capture that specific atmospheric shift you get at Lake Wakatipu. You can have tourist buses and jet boats roaring right behind you, but the second your eyes lock onto the water’s edge, all that noise just drops away. I wanted the canvas to feel like that exact moment of quiet.