Timaru printmaker Albert Rae was one of the few New Zealand artists to work with the mezzotint medium. Although notoriously difficult to master, the mezzotint offers rich rewards to artists who overcome its technical obstacles. In these two works, Rae uses the soft tonal variations inherent in the medium to create sublime, gloomy visions of a mountain stream at the Otira Gorge. These prints, where water tumbles relentlessly over the scattered rocks of the stream bed, are in their small way a modest homage to van der Velden’s monumental paintings. (Van der Velden: Otira, February 2010)