Trees near Te Anau

In the later stages of her career, and particularly following her retirement, Ngarita Johnstone was able to devote much of her time to travelling throughout the South Island to draw and photograph. Trees near Te Anau shows her fondness for both the drawing medium and the New Zealand landscape. It is one of the few completed drawings by Ngarita in the Macmillan Brown collection, and shows a remarkable shift from the embroidered fabrics that she produced during her time at art school, to an assured and fluid drawing style. Upon a hillside sit five trees in silhouette. Their trunks are skeletally thin, however their branches widen and are filled with soft, thick bunches of leaves. This is the only area of precise detail within the drawing; the rest of the landscape has been outlined, but only softly shaded within. The lower thirds of the landscape are rendered in standard graphite pencil, which is paired with a cool blue sky, suggesting a winter’s landscape.