Colin John McCahon (/məˈkɑːn/; 1 August 1919 – 27 May 1987)[1] was a New Zealand artist whose work over 45 years consisted of various styles, including landscape, figuration, abstraction, and the overlay of painted text.

[1] He showed an early interest in art, influenced by regular visits to exhibitions and the work of his maternal grandfather, photographer and painter William Ferrier, which hung in the family home.

[7] At the age of 14, convinced he wanted to be an artist,[5] McCahon took Russell Clark's Saturday-morning art classes to learn the fundamental skills of painting.

[5] Visits to an exhibition by Toss Woollaston, whose landscapes, "clean, bright with New Zealand light, and full of air", also inspired him to become a painter.

[1] McCahon later attended the Dunedin School of Art (now known as Otago Polytechnic) from 1937 to 1939, where his teacher Robert Nettleton Field proved to be an inspirational influence.

[1] After leaving Otago, McCahon attended King Edward Technical College Art School as a part-time student.

[6] His painting Harbour Cone from Peggy’s Hill was considered too abstract and was excluded from the Otago Art Society's exhibition, despite a rule entitling each member to submit one work.

[8] The society's conventions of good taste were challenged by McCahon's modernist style, which reduced the volcanic cones of the Otago Peninsula to a topographic series of bare, almost monochromatic forms.

[7] McCahon supported himself in the late 1930s with a stint of working in a touring variety show, stage scenery painting, and fruit picking.

At the beginning of World War II, McCahon had initially tried to enlist for military service after deciding that the defeat of fascism was a global necessity, even from his pacifist standpoint.

[6] McCahon's first mature works, religious paintings and symbolic landscapes, such as The Angel of the Annunciation, Takaka: Night and Day, and The Promised Land, were produced in the years immediately after the war.

[14] The support of the poet and editor, Charles Brasch, enabled McCahon to visit Melbourne from July to August 1951 to study paintings in the National Gallery of Victoria.

[6] In August 1949, Helen Hitchings's gallery mounted a joint exhibition of works by McCahon and Woollaston in Wellington; a selection was shown in Auckland later that month.

Partly as a result of his exposure to the area, McCahon painted many landscapes featuring beaches, the sea, the sky, land, boats, and kauri trees.

[5] He started working at the Auckland City Art Gallery first as a cleaner, then as a custodian of the paintings, and finally, in April 1956, as the deputy director.

[5] McCahon assisted in the professionalisation of the gallery and helped it mount the first exhibitions and publications to record New Zealand art history.

[15] Paintings such as The Wake and the Northland Panels reflect McCahon's immediate response to this visit,[5] which accelerated his stylistic development during the following decade.

His works from this period include Victory Over Death 2, gifted to the Australian National Gallery by the New Zealand Government,[16] Gate III, which was made for Auckland Art Gallery's Ten Big Paintings exhibition and later sold to Victoria University, and the Necessary Protection series along with numerous landscapes of the Kaipara area.

[6][7] In 1984, the exhibition "I Will Need Words" was presented as part of the Biennale of Sydney; McCahon was barely able to appreciate his growing international reputation due to his ill health.

These diagrams ignored built features, trees, and objects irrelevant to his scientific themes as he attempted to strip the landscape to its geological basis.

[7]At the Dunedin School of Art, McCahon met Rodney Eric Kennedy, Doris Lusk, Anne Hamblett, and Patrick Hayman, a group whose members all went on to become notable New Zealand artists.

[1] During a visit to the United States in 1958,[1] McCahon saw paintings by Barnett Newman, Kazimir Malevich, Jackson Pollock, Richard Diebenkorn, Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian, and Willem de Kooning.

[35] Other artists who have completed a residency include Judy Millar, Andrew McLeod, James Robinson, Gavin Hipkins, Rohan Wealleans, Luise Fong, Eve Armstrong, Lisa Reihana, Ava Seymour, Andy Leleisi’uao, Jim Speers, Liyen Chong, Tim Wagg and Wayne Youle.

"[36] In June 1997, the Urewera Mural, a triptych, was stolen from the reception of the Department of Conservation Āniwaniwa Visitor Centre at Lake Waikaremoana.

After missing for 15 months, it was returned in August 1998 after negotiations involving arts patron Jenny Gibbs, Te Kaha, and Tuhoe member Tame Iti.

[37] In late 2006, manuscripts, including seven Colin McCahon poems, along with a Charles Goldie painting, and an unbound copy of the Oxford Lectern Bible, were stolen from the University of Auckland Library during the Christmas break.

Art experts and police said at the time that selling the paintings in New Zealand or overseas would be difficult, as anyone who knew about the artists would be very suspicious.

[40] Tobias Cummings and The Long Way Home's "Canoe Song" refers to several of McCahon's works on their debut album, Join the Dots.