Landscape, near Waiotapu

This painting shows Melvin Day's early exploration of a more abstract visual language, which is began to apply to scene of the local area around Rotorua. Here, the thermal landscape is reduced to flattened geomentric blocks of muted greens. A sense of pictorial drama is created through the strong angular structure and acute angles of the hillside which lurch skywards. Day was beginning to explore modern art through books and in conversations with his painting partner Dr Wilfred Stanley and with John Weeks who travelled down from Auckland for painting excursions with Day and Wallis.

This work is one in a series of works Day painted of the area.

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