Colin McCahon

Colin McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand's foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

McCahon's intense images of the North Otago series remain among the most instantly recognisable landscapes in New Zealand art.

'These paintings derive from my own long association with this most beautiful landscape, both as a child and also later. Unlike many other parts of the country the landforms of North Otago suggest both age and permanence. They have been formed not by violence, but by the slow processes of normal erosion on more gentle landscape faulting than has happened elsewhere. On painting this landscape, I am not trying to show any simple likeness to a specific place. These paintings are most certainly about my long love affair with North Otago as a unique place.'

Source: Colin McCahon 1967