Colin McCahon, cool modern painter from the cooler Southern Hemisphere

 

I only just recently heard of this marvelous and original painter on Radio National, the public radio station here in Australia. It was an informative interview with a curator from Auckland. I immediately went to Google to look up some images. 

Naturally, I identified with many of the images straight away through my own way of working here on the Pacific rim of civilization. He was a bit of an eccentric, like me, but a religious one, unlike me. 

The top picture has a bit of Paul Klee in it, but also Raul Dufy too.

I find his sense colour quite interesting, and equally for his sense of light. I love the graphic punch of these things here. There is a unity in his mind when he paints as if he doesn’t fuss with too many ideas; he attacks the canvas armed with an image already formed inside of him. His painting is from New Zealand which is the last land mass before arriving at Antarctica and its cooler colour harmonies reflect that southern latitude.

I have not listed the sizes because I couldn’t find them for these images on Google, which for all its greatness, is still lacking. I will let the images speak for themselves and the readers investigate online as well.