Colin McCahon (1919-1987) is one of the most important and influential painters in New Zealand. He grew up in the Dunedin region and attended schools there. His early paintings are mostly landscape and nature.
Colin is
not afraid to express himself and convey messages to his audience via (by?) paintings, in both artist drawings and written words. Many of his paintings are
based on religion theme and contained messages that he wanted to ask god.
I AM
(1954)
This painting
can be interrupted in two different ways. Colin asked
God how he can identify to the people, God says I am, that’s who I AM. It can
also be read as a painter and artist, he must believe himself.
In 1958,
Colin visited USA and was deeply impressed and influenced by Jackson Pollock’
work. Colin liked the way Jackson’s paintings are so large that one has to ‘walk
through’ the paintings to experience them, and also how the paintings are hung
freely in the gallery. The USA trip gave Colin a lot of confident to work the
way he never have. He begun to work in large scale, upstretched and unframed canvas.
His painting styles also changed, the brush strokes and free flowing writings.
In 1959,
he started a new series – inspired by re-reading of the Bible story of Elias. These paintings are words dominated and emphasised on certain words. Theme of death, faith
and God.
The Second Gate Series (1962)
In the early 60's, Colin started to experimenting of new things such as masking tapes and black & white colours. He produced a collection of paintings called Gate series. A lot of abstract and text paintings in this collection. The Second Gate Series (1962) is a 16 panels of artwork in varies sizes. At the time Colin was concerned about the new clear war but he was interested in political views and current affairs. In many of the 16 panels of paintings, he hand written poetry from the books of Jeremiah, Isaiah and Lamentations. However, he failed to reach to communicate his ideas clear enough to the audiences, due to the Gate series was too abstract. He then went back to paint landscape in Northland where he loved the place so much and became very important to him.
Numerals (1965)
Colin moved away from landscape paintings and begun to work on Numerals. This 13 panels black & white paintings can be interrupted in many ways, this is because in Christianly the number has multiple meanings. Three parts of whole - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Victory Over Death 2 (1970)
This over 2-memter tall painting is one of the key works of McCahon, it is also the beginning of a journey towards his own death. The writing are very personal and questions of faith. the 'I AM' on the right is being refereed to the voice of God, which is taken from the New English Bible.
"The light
is among you
still, but not
for long. Go
on your way
while you
have the light
so that darkness
may not over-
take you. He
who journeys
in the dark
does not know
where he is
going.
I AM"
Teaching Aids (1975)
Teaching Aids 2 (June), Teaching Aids 2 (July) and Teaching Aids 3 all have the quality of black boards and white chalks. It is believed the inspiration was from the fruit and veggie shop, where they will display the promotions written on the board. In
Teaching Aids 2 (July), the blurriness in some parts where Colin 'changed his mind' of something made this particular piece of painting stood out from the other two, where one can questions what he wrote in the first place and what changed his mind.
The Final Years (1980-1987)
The paintings Colin produced in the 80's are based on written text rather than 'images'. He become dark, distanced and has drinking issues in his final years, and he knows the death of mind and body is coming close.
I Considered All The Acts of Oppression (1981) is to be believed his last painting, found in his studio and it was unsigned, undated and probably unfinished. The painting is Ecclesiastes based and has kept his audiences keep on guessing.
source: images from http://www.mccahon.co.nz/ film: NZ Festival, TVNZ productions 18/September/2004.
