Flight

A lifelong pacifist, Rita Angus was drawn to a carved stone dove among the piled-up headstones at the Bolton Street Cemetery demolition site.

In this painting, that dove takes flight over a composite landscape of different locations in Wellington: Island Bay’s boats, Mākara’s hills, and the cemetery’s headstones. It is a surreal image, with three horizontal layers united by the bird, which is at once weightless and dense.