B.
Van der Velden is leaving the building.
![Petrus van der Velden Mountain Stream, Otira Gorge 1893. Oil on canvas. Private collection](/media/cache/86/f5/86f5d7c0c58372a6507a4b4c3a8e6d3f.jpg)
Petrus van der Velden Mountain Stream, Otira Gorge 1893. Oil on canvas. Private collection
As the exhibition I curated is disbanded and the works returned to owners throughout the country I find myself reflecting on what my favourite painting in Van der Velden: Otira was.
It's the smallest work from the 'Mountain Stream' series. The bigger paintings of this subject are incredible and breathtaking in their sheer scale (something that was very rare in ninteenth-century New Zealand painting), but this small work is the darkest painting of the series and I love it for its vision.
In particular, I love the small touch of white van der Velden used to convey the torrent at the top of the mountain pass and the way that, illuminated in the gloomy half-light, it stands out against the darkness of the surrounding landscape. This painting really reminds me of McCahon's small waterfall series from the 1960s where light penetrates the darkness in much the same way as van der Velden's work. Van der Velden vs McCahon? Well it's van der Velden's Otira series all the way for me.
Related reading: Colin McCahon
Exhibition
McCahon / Van der Velden
11 September 2016
An exhibition of two of New Zealand's most respected painters.
Exhibition
Van der Velden: Otira
22 February 2011
This exhibition brings together a comprehensive selection of Van der Velden's paintings portraying the wild, untouched natural beauty of the Otira region's mountainous landscape.
Commentary
![What We Talk About With McCahon](/media/cache/c8/58/c858f14c2c87595cabdd90b8ee5cb52e.jpg)
What We Talk About With McCahon
Where to begin when writing or talking about Colin McCahon? I remember seeing one of his paintings for the first time, a North Otago landscape painted deep green with a sunless white sky on a piece of hardboard, hanging at the Forrester Gallery in Ōamaru while on a family trip when I was a young teenager. I felt like I recognised the landscape depicted from what I saw around me growing up, but I hadn’t seen it reduced to something so stark and primal before.
Exhibition
From the Sun Deck: McCahon's Titirangi
Colin McCahon’s shift to Titirangi in 1953 was a watershed moment in the artist’s career, providing the inspiration for him to develop his interest in cubism and abstraction.
Commentary
![To Colin McCahon](/media/cache/db/0c/db0c2ec184c38ffd3ad5a58b6dcac398.jpg)
To Colin McCahon
James K. Baxter’s 1952 poem ‘To Colin McCahon’ is an important marker in the long and sometimes tempestuous artistic relationship the two men shared. On an immediate level, the poem is a response to McCahon’s painting There is only one direction (1952), which he presented to Jim and Jacquie Baxter to mark the birth of their daughter Hilary after they had named McCahon her godfather.
Notes
![Canterbury Landscape by Colin McCahon](/media/cache/5e/e2/5ee2c0fcdae8f569131a96cb97c6df92.jpg)
Canterbury Landscape by Colin McCahon
In 2014 we purchased an important landscape work by Colin McCahon. Curator Peter Vangioni speaks about this new addition to Christchurch Art Gallery’s collection.
Notes
![‘Where the picture stops and the world begins’](/media/cache/9c/07/9c07d57c627070248b14f2a80ebef9bc.jpg)
‘Where the picture stops and the world begins’
The way a work of art is framed affects our perception of the piece. A bad frame can detract and distract, a good frame enhances and even extends a work. While the Gallery has been closed we have updated frames for a number of works in the collection.
Notes
![Kauri tree landscape by Colin McCahon](/media/cache/c8/4d/c84dbc8cf6158f1e0e81a71f1fe82ecb.jpg)
Kauri tree landscape by Colin McCahon
This article first appeared as 'Mighty kauris inspired McCahon' in The Press on 10 February 2015.
Notes
![as there is a constant flow of light](/media/cache/7d/05/7d05060a738c4fbb3c4454e0de544f83.jpg)
as there is a constant flow of light
On a recent printer's residency at the Otago University's Otakou Press Colin McCahon's huge mural painting Waterfall Theme and variations dominated proceedings.
Collection
![Kauri tree landscape](/media/cache/c8/4d/c84dbc8cf6158f1e0e81a71f1fe82ecb.jpg)
Colin McCahon Kauri tree landscape
In 1958 poet and arts patron Charles Brasch, a great supporter of McCahon, said of the Titirangi works: 'These Auckland paintings seem an entirely new departure. The colour and light of Auckland are different from those of the rest of New Zealand; they are more atmospheric, they seem to have an independent, airy existence of their own, and they break up the uniform mass of solid bodies, hills or forests or water, into a kind of brilliant prismatic dance. Some of the paintings are explorations, evocations, of the kauri forest of the Waitakeres. In some you seem to be inside the forest, discovering the structure of individual trees, with their great shaft trunks, their balloon-like cones, and the shafts of light that play among them. In others you look at the forest from outside, as it rises like a wall before you, built up of cylinders and cubes of lighter and darker colour, with its wild jagged outlines against the sky.'
(From the Sun Deck: McCahon’s Titirangi, 17 September 2016 – 6 February 2017)
Notes
![Light Passing Into a dark landscape](/media/cache/7b/1f/7b1f39b2ac294b5423dd1e851dd2fbd3.jpg)
Light Passing Into a dark landscape
Today is the centennial of the death of one of New Zealand's most treasured artists, Petrus van der Velden.
Notes
![There is only one direction by Colin McCahon](/media/cache/cd/a4/cda4d7faf319708ad3a661512558f121.jpg)
There is only one direction by Colin McCahon
This article appeared as 'Divine Innovation' in the The Press on 31 August 2012.
Collection
![There is only one direction](/media/cache/cd/a4/cda4d7faf319708ad3a661512558f121.jpg)
Colin McCahon There is only one direction
This pared back, strikingly modern Madonna and child was painted in the Christchurch suburb of Phillipstown where Colin McCahon, perhaps New Zealand’s most acclaimed twentieth-century artist, lived with his family between 1948 and 1953. In contrast to the typically grander, often lavish treatment of this traditional subject within art history, McCahon’s composition is personal and startlingly bare, reduced to two naked figures framed within a rough oval that emphasises their close and enduring connection. Without haloes, thrones or attending angels, their identity is alluded to only through their grave sense of purpose and the work’s uncompromising title.
McCahon gave There is only one direction to the renowned writer James K. Baxter and his wife Jacqueline, marking the friendship between the two families and McCahon’s position as godfather to their young daughter Hilary. The painting sat above Baxter’s writing desk for many years.
(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)
Notes
![As there is a constant flow of light we are born into the pure land](/media/cache/d6/55/d655f93621808488d1f594dad7213172.jpg)
As there is a constant flow of light we are born into the pure land
After many, many months in the 'Darkness' of the empty gallery, I can think of no better words than those of Colin McCahon to signify the opening of the new gallery shop at 40 Lichfield Street.
Drop in Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, 10am-4pm Weekends
See you all soon!
Notes
![O'Reilly/McCahon: an Easter meditation](/media/cache/50/8d/508d513f6a39f2106067c16defba52b9.jpg)
O'Reilly/McCahon: an Easter meditation
An Easter-themed excerpt from an article published in 2010 in The Journal of New Zealand Art History...
Notes
![Sutton high-fives McCahon](/media/cache/df/07/df0762b87ea47bd846cc0d85ec2afb6b.jpg)
Sutton high-fives McCahon
Nothing made it into a W.A. Sutton painting by accident, and the white line that rises diagonally through the sky in Plantation Series II is no exception.
Exhibition
Colin McCahon
Two decades after Colin McCahon's death, this touring focus exhibition brings together paintings and works on paper by one of the most widely acclaimed New Zealand artists.
Collection
![Blind V](/media/cache/37/7f/377f114e4a4b2caed2beab9773dd3e6c.jpg)
Colin McCahon Blind V
The word ‘blind’ refers to a screen that cuts out light, but Colin McCahon also uses it to refer to an absence of vision. Questions of faith were important to McCahon and he often used references to blindness to suggest the inability to see the real essence and value of things. McCahon’s style was highly personal and distinctive. Blind V is part of a series of five works painted onto window blinds. The abstract forms have the feel of a beach and sky and it has been suggested that the ‘blindness’ which McCahon refers to was the inability of New Zealanders to really see and appreciate their own unique environment.
McCahon is regarded by many as New Zealand’s greatest contemporary artist. Born in Timaru, he studied art in Dunedin. He lived in Christchurch for a time, became keeper and assistant director at Auckland Art Gallery, then lecturer in painting at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, before taking up painting full time in 1970.
Collection
![Kauri tree landscape](/media/cache/04/8e/048e6f19ae93683fb121a7c5a866a098.jpg)
Colin McCahon Kauri tree landscape
In 1958 poet and arts patron Charles Brasch, a great supporter of McCahon, said of the Titirangi works: 'These Auckland paintings seem an entirely new departure. The colour and light of Auckland are different from those of the rest of New Zealand; they are more atmospheric, they seem to have an independent, airy existence of their own, and they break up the uniform mass of solid bodies, hills or forests or water, into a kind of brilliant prismatic dance. Some of the paintings are explorations, evocations, of the kauri forest of the Waitakeres. In some you seem to be inside the forest, discovering the structure of individual trees, with their great shaft trunks, their balloon-like cones, and the shafts of light that play among them. In others you look at the forest from outside, as it rises like a wall before you, built up of cylinders and cubes of lighter and darker colour, with its wild jagged outlines against the sky.'
(From the Sun Deck: McCahon’s Titirangi, 17 September 2016 – 6 February 2017)
Collection
![Light falling through a dark landscape (A)](/media/cache/9d/d0/9dd0d5f7b54644e1ea5c016ffbfd9bf6.jpg)
Colin McCahon Light falling through a dark landscape (A)
For the exhibition Untitled #1050 (25 November 2017 – 14 October 2018) this work was displayed with the following label:
“As a painter I may often be more worried about you than you are about me and if I wasn’t concerned I’d not be doing my work properly as a painter. Painting can be a potent way of talking.
“Do you believe in the sunrise?
“My painting year happens first in late winter and early spring. I paint with the season and paint best during the long hot summers. I prefer to paint at night or more especially in the late summer afternoons when, as the light fades, tonal relationships become terrifyingly clear.
“At night I paint under a very large incandescent light bulb. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I am only now, and slowly, becoming able to paint in the morning. After a lifetime of working – farming, factories, gardening, teaching, the years at the Auckland City Art Gallery – I find it hard to paint in the world’s usual work-time. It can be difficult to accept that painting too is work.”
—Colin McCahon, 1972
Collection
![Northland](/media/cache/f4/b7/f4b748aadc746b4f38bd43e028af462e.jpg)
Colin McCahon Northland
In 1958, Colin McCahon spent several months in America, visiting numerous art museums to see historical and contemporary art from the United States and Europe. Returning to a wintry Aotearoa New Zealand, he struggled to readjust. Eventually he found solace and inspiration in memories of a place very close to his heart – the wild, wind-sculpted landscape of Aotearoa’s Far North. Oil paintings were followed by a series of ink wash drawings, painted on paper spread out over the floor like a continuous, unfolding frieze. They are dark and lonely images, full of longing and a sense of return. “It’s a painful love, loving a land,” McCahon wrote. “It takes a long time.”
(Absence, May 2023)
Collection
![Red and black landscape](/media/cache/be/54/be54982958c081cd69834c14b992d56c.jpg)
Colin McCahon Red and black landscape
For the exhibition I See Red (5 December 2007 - 23 November 2008) this work was displayed with the following label: Colin McCahon’s combination of sky, sea and land is the simplest of landscapes, but by using powerful red and black, he has created a painting filled with mystery and weight.
‘Red sky at morning, shepherd’s warning, Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight’ goes the old saying. This could be sunset or sunrise, a perfect day to come or a perfect storm. Which would you choose?
Collection
![Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is](/media/cache/ba/17/ba1700049ff73412c87733c0cc4a683e.jpg)
Colin McCahon Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is
In April 1958 Colin McCahon travelled to the US, responding both to the expansiveness of the American landscape and to the modern American painting that he saw in museums. On his return, his works increased in scale while economising in gesture: the landscape elements of Tomorrow have been reduced to a horizon and lowering sky, with the land bisected by a grey river. He converted his Titirangi garage into a studio, and built an extra bedroom for his children underneath. The studio was gloomy – there was only one small side window for light when the garage door was closed – but it precipitated dozens of new works. Tomorrow was an unfortunate painting, said McCahon, ‘in that it wouldn’t go right, and I got madder and madder. I hurled a whole lovely quart tin of black Dulux at the board and reconstructed the painting out of the mess.’ The black paint (a commercial flooring paint, mixed with sand) dripped down the surface of the work and ran between wide cracks in the studio floorboards, ruining clothes and bed linen in his sons’ room below. He finally finished the painting in May 1959.
(March 2018)