Looking at a painting in a catalogue or online is never the same as seeing it in real life. It is not only that the dimensions are often a surprise, the surface texture and vibrancy of the paint is almost impossible to know in reproduction. This is especially so of Don Binney’s paintings; the intensity of the colours, the juxtapositions of smooth planes of sky with the dense impasto of foliage, and the way this variation in paint absorbs and reflects light are testament to this. You could say that in many ways it is paint which has been one of Binney’s most keenly observed subjects.

The application of paint in this Tui Over the Anawhata is exquisite. It shows the consummate skill of the artist’s technique in the liquid sheen of the black-on-black of the tui’s breast and wings and, beyond that, the smooth clarity of a duck-egg-blue sky and grey ridge of the hill in the distance. As in much of Binney’s best work, it is landscape rendered as sweeping curves with the details of plant and bird life in the rich textures of tactile paint, and the flow of a wing echoing that of the landscape below and beyond.

In the 1960s, birds were ubiquitous in Binney’s work. Their presence is the result of a lifelong interest in ornithology and bird watching. Although they fit seamlessly into the landscape, there is a sense of an imbalance in scale with the birds appearing larger than life. It is a disparity in perspective that Binney once attributed to always having watched the birds through binoculars, the indispensable hand tool of all ornithologists. In the present work, this disjunction in scale has the effect of highlighting the avian specimen as the prized possession or central treasure of the painting. As is characteristic of Binney during this period, fine detail has been eschewed in favour of strong outlines, blocks of colour and thick, palpable paint, which combine to produce a potent and arresting image. In this manner, the landscape has been reduced to an undulating sweep of the brush; the two trees in the foreground are pared back to their bare essential forms and the monumental, gliding tui has been transformed into a refined and highly stylised creature of crystalline beauty.

In the ‘classic’ Binney paintings, there is much that is quintessentially New Zealand: agapanthus, black sand dunes, buildings which Francis Pound refers to as colonial gothic, the wildness of the West Coast and the dense green of the New Zealand bush. They are landscapes, as both Damian Skinner and Hamish Keith have noted, that hark back to the clear outlines and interest in structural forms of early New Zealand painters like John Kinder and Alfred Sharpe. In the crispness of their outlines and use of vibrant colour, they are also works that sit alongside those of Rita Angus and Michael Smither. In the mid-to-late 1960s, Binney, although barely out of art school, was one of the leading painters of the period.

He painted extraordinarily peaceful images: perhaps, in part, because his works are empty of people and therefore devoid of any of the bluster of life. Or perhaps it is because this was a series begun at a time when New Zealand seemed more innocent – before the upheavals caused by the Springbok tour and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. Now, when you look at this work, it takes you back to that moment in our history when what seemed to matter most was the conservation of the landscape. Binney’s works are, in a sense, like a salve to the spirit: works that make you feel the calm of clear blue skies and the simplicity and peacefulness of watching a bird soar across the horizon.