Pound's writings "challenged the writing of an earlier generation of art historians, including Hamish Keith, Gordon H. Brown and Peter Tomory, and championed abstract artists, especially Gordon Walters and Richard Killeen.
"[1] Pound completed his doctorate on the work of Richard Killeen and lectured in art history at the University of Auckland.
His 1983 book Frames on the Land refuted earlier art historical arguments for a particular quality to New Zealand's light, which resulted in a bold, hard-eged approach to landscape painting in that country.
Instead, he argued that visiting and immigrant artists in the 19th century brought established 'frames' with them, such as a sense of the land and a sublime and awesome force, through which they interpreted the New Zealand landscape.
[1][4] Pound's final book summarises his thinking on 1930s artists, writers and thinkers who used art, literature and theory to posit a new sense of New Zealand identity through high culture, and how from the 1970s this framework was dismantled.