There has always been in Scott McFarlane’s paintings a sense that the land is living and expressive of the specific wairau of the place concerned. Also there is an awareness of the landform being as much a container of spirit as it representative of the past. So then there is an accumulation of emotion, history and atmosphere underneath these works.

In Otago Paintings McFarlane has returned to a landscape he knows well (but has not painted for over ten years). He demonstrates a continuing concern with the geomorphology of it. There is clear referencing being made to the topographical style of landscape drawing practised by colonial artists when NZ was rediscovered in successive voyages by French and English explorers from 1740 onwards. His treatments are tonal, shape and distance are accorded significant roles in the pictorial purpose of these brooding, accurate, paintings.