Years ago I went far up the Rangitikei beyond Taihape to visit my friend David Russell, whose farm at that time was as far as you could drive up the river into the bush. The river is so deep between high papa cliffs that down at the bottom where the river flows there is only a sort of twilight, even on a sunny day. Once I crossed the gorge at a wider place in the bush in a tray slung on a logger's wire rope, and we sat in mid-air watching a large trout feed in the river below where a patch of sun broke through the over-hanging bush. From that time on I have painted the river up and down its length, and always there has been delight in painting those lovely cliffs that are that most paintable of all colours - white. Peter McIntyre

Peter McIntyre's New Zealand, A H & A W Reed 1964