Want to experience the magic and mystery of New Zealand’s breathtaking landscapes without leaving home? Look no further than Auckland-based oil painter Rosanne Croucher.
Rosanne’s paintings are stunning on several levels. Not only does she accurately capture the vast, untamed vistas of her island country (with an astounding amount of detail) but her use of light, shadow, and the occasional figure somehow imbues each piece with its own narrative.
Just take a look at The First Sunshine, below, and I think you’ll see what I mean.
It’s incredibly hard to depict scale like that—both the contrast between that massive, ancient tree and the figure at its base; and also the city in the distance, sprawling across the hills beneath an immense cloud-filled sky.
And for every place that New Zealand amazes with its flora and fauna, it also beckons with its nostalgic touches of home and hearth.
Tomorrow’s Secret shows a cozy farmstead at dusk, with whitewashed buildings set against a windbreak of darker trees. Night’s shadows crawl across the ground, filling in spaces between fence posts and scattered shrubs—retreating only from the small figure playing with a mysterious glowing light in the curve of the wet dirt path.
We don’t know anything about that boy, or the light he carries, but it feels to me as if he’s home. . . surrounded by trees and buildings he’s known his whole life.
Last but not least, Up in the Air catches a moment of flurried flight alonge a serene and secluded beach.
Below it all, in the mirror-like sheen of the wet sand, we see a second (if slightly more watery) view of the amazing landscape spread out along the coastline, and a few rolling, breaking waves tinged with green and white.
If you’d like to see more of Rosanne Croucher’s gorgeous New Zealand artwork, please take a minute to visit her website today. You won’t be disappointed!
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