For the exhibition Painters As Printmakers (19 October 2007 - 20 January 2008) this work appeared with this label:

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Robin White began her career as a painter, but since the 1980s printmaking, particularly woodcuts, has played a major role in her oeuvre. Naturally drawn to the screenprint medium, she taught herself the technical intricacies involved in producing prints largely through trial and error, and within a short time had mastered the process. Screenprinting proved an ideal medium for White to translate many of the sharp-edged realist subjects, such as those seen in Mangaweka, which were present in her paintings in the early 1970s.

White studied painting under Colin McCahon at the Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University, graduating in 1967. She was influenced in particular by the realist style of Canterbury painter Rita Angus.