White is well-known for his compelling portraits, which capture the character of their subjects both through White's skilful perception and realisation of the subtleties of the human face and form, and through their detailed settings. Rather than gilding his subjects, White often paints them as pensive or solemn, proud or sad, curled up or hunched over, seeking to glimpse them with a kind of truthfulness; he writes, "I genuinely feel the best portraits can be the least flattering".

White is also an adept landscape painter; intrigued by the fall of light across landscapes seen from above, he paints the shining highlights and shadowy hollows of New Zealand's rolling tree-studded hills. White's landscapes evoke the palette of the landscape in different places and at different times of day: the luminous greens of bright sunlit pastures, the ochres and golds of dry hills, the greys and dark greens of a gloomy day and the pink and olive stains of dusk.