Percival River, Hanmer

Though Ngarita Johnstone was a talented draughtswoman and had potential to be a great painter also, it was rare that she practised in these mediums. She attributed much of her reluctance to the criticism she received from her father, who regularly exhibited his oil and watercolour paintings. In an interview, Johnstone stated that she had always disliked painting in oil, and had torn up most of the ones she started. She did, however, enjoy the medium of watercolour. Interestingly, her chosen setting of Percival River, near Hanmer, was one to which her father regularly travelled and painted also. It is an autumnal scene, as shown by the pink-red leaves on the central trees, and the skeletal bare trunk of the tree in the foreground. Above the hills in the distance, a foreboding blue-grey sky looms, threatening the river with rain.