Born in Otaki at the end of World War II, Brent Wong grew up in Wellington, living above his uncle’s shop in Vivian Street. Early paintings included the Victorian and Edwardian wooden and masonry buildings of the capital city, viewed from his bedroom window. Although he studied at the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design under James Coe, Wong is largely self-taught as an artist, having been mentored by the painter Rita Angus (1908-1970) whom he met as an exhibiting artist at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in 1967 while it still occupied a gallery in the National Art Gallery in Buckle Street.

In addition to Angus, his early influences included the Belgian Surrealist artist Rene Magritte (1898-1967) and American Regionalist painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009). He worked in acrylic on hardboard using fine brushes to perfect his technique for rendering local landscapes sprawling beneath perfectly blue skies with a high degree of finish. The land shown seems overgrazed, parched and dry as if affected by drought after a long summer. His high viewpoint shows us the erosion of the cliffs into the sea below this hilltop.

Study for Anniversary includes his characteristic white geometric architectural forms floating in the sky - two disks, a cube and a thinner plinth. Combined with the dark cavern of the open mine shaft, leaning fence post and shadow creeping over the scene from the left, the forms in the sky create a sense of contrast and mystery.