McCahon's Northland Panels

The Northland Panels consists of eight separate pieces of unstretched, unframed, hanging canvas, each one depicting a scene of rural Northland. The pieces are:

1) Black and White

2) Red Clay Landscape

3) Manuka and Red Clay Landscape

4) Rain

5) A landscape with too few lovers

6) Tui

7) Landscape with White Road

8) It can be dark here

The Northland Panels were painted after Colin McCahon returned from an extensive tour of the United States. While there he visited over sixty art galleries, met curators and artists, and saw a number of large-scale abstract paintings by various contemporary American artists. These artists included Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock, Marc Rothko, Willem De Kooning and a number of artists working in the San Francisco Bay area.

The work of the Abstract Expressionists inspired McCahon to paint on a larger scale - with a looser, more expressive style.

McCahon was fascinated by very large paintings, such as Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm and Picasso's Guernica, which McCahon described as 'one of the few really splendid works' (1). It was after seeing these large works that McCahon realised the 'importance of pictures for people to walk past' (2).

After his arrival back home in Titirangi, McCahon painted the Northland Panels in a single August afternoon, using house paint. However, further changes and alterations were carried out over subsequent weeks, and the work was not actually signed and dated until November that year.

The Northland Panels were partly a response to the enclosure McCahon felt on his return to New Zealand. 'We went home to the bush of Titirangi. It was cold and dripping and shut in.. I fled north in memory and painted the Northland Panels . I was just bursting for the wide open spaces.' (3). On his imaginary 'journey' to Northland, McCahon envisaged a landscape which he remembered as being 'uniquely New Zealand' but which also had an affinity with parts of America which had overwhelmed him with their expansiveness.

The size of the Northland Panels reflects McCahon's reaction to vast American landscapes. He had travelled to the Salt Lakes in Utah and had been awed by the incredible size of some American cities that were 'taller by far than kauri trees'. (4). The scale of the Northland Panels means the viewer is forced to walk past the panels in order to view them, creating a sense of 'walking through' the landscape.

McCahon often uses written words in his paintings in order to communicate more directly with the viewer. The words 'Rain' and 'Tui, Tui, Tui' in the Northland Panels imply sounds and smells - as well as sights. McCahon believed we should be sensitive to 'life' in a seemingly empty landscape, and treasure it. We don't see the tui in the panel 'Tui', but the word is 'heard' coming from the bush, so we know it is there.

The landscape McCahon depicts is ordinary - 'snap shots' of Northland rather than glamorous tourist scenes like Mitre Peak or Milford Sound. McCahon believed that New Zealanders take the ordinary New Zealand landscape too much for granted, thereby endangering it with their indifference. 'McCahon is saying that it is a mistake to equate the landscape with "scenery" as tourist organizations do. His concern is for a land so taken for granted that it is never truly seen for what it is.' (5).

The Northland Panels, one of McCahon's major works, represents a turning point in his style. In this work we witness his continuing concern for the New Zealand landscape - deepened by the experience of leaving, seeing new cultural and natural worlds, and then returning with a fresh outlook.

References

(1) Brown, Gordon H. (1993). Colin McCahon: artist. Auckland: Reed. Revised edition. p 88.

(2) Brown. (1993). p 93.

(3-4) Brown. (1993). p 95.

(5) Brown, Gordon H. (1984). Colin McCahon: artist. Wellington: Reed. p. 96.

More information

Some of the following publications may be found on the Discovery Centre bookshelves, or in Te Aka Matua Library and Information Centre on Level 4. Photographs of Te Papa collection items may be ordered from the Images, on Level 4.

• Brown, Gordon H. (1993). Colin McCahon: artist. Auckland: Reed. Revised edition.
• Dunn, Michael. (1991). A Concise History of New Zealand Painting. Auckland: David Bateman and Craftsman House.
• National Art Gallery. (1984). I Will Need Words: Colin McCahon's word and number paintings. Wellington: National Art Gallery.
• Rymer, Judy; Pound, Francis and Laing, Robin. (1988). Victory over Death: a film about Colin McCahon, New Zealand's most controversial painter. New Zealand: Meridian Film Productions.
• Wood, Agnes. (1997). Colin McCahon: the man and the teacher. Auckland: David Ling.

Examples of other works by Colin McCahon in Te Papa's collection

• Crucifixion, 1950 - 1952, oil on canvas
• Necessary Protection, 1971, pastel on paper
• Practical religion: the resurrection of Lazarus showing Mount Martha, 1969, oil on unstretched canvas
• IV Noughts and Crosses 2, 1976, oil on paper on hardboard
• A letter to Hebrews, 1979, acrylic on unstretched canvas